A LETTER

TO

AMERICAN TEACHERS
OF

HISTORY
BY

HENRY ADAMS

WASHINGTON
1910

hhd

f?

1Q/4

-8
2,

1603

STREET,
C.

WASHINGTON, D.
Dear
Sir
:

Availing myself of the privilege commonly

granted, in the liberal professions, to age and
seniority, I use the

freedom of an old colleague

in offering this small

volume

for

your accept

ance.

Some
made

fifteen

years ago, on retiring from the

Association, I

Presidency

of the Historical

a short address on the relations of the

to

Historical Department

society

and, had

such a custom existed, I should have gladly

enlarged the paper to
the

dimensions of a
sent

Report.
effect,

The volume now

you,

is,

in

such a Report, unofficial and personal.

it

Touching, as

does,

some of the most

deli

cate relations of University Instruction in rival

departments, the book has too

much

the air of
that

provoking controversy.

I do not

know
iii

iv

LETTER TO TEACHERS

controversy would do harm, but I see nothing

to be gained

by provoking
is

it.

For the moment,

at most, of

the problem
tion
;

chiefly

one of technical instruc

;

of grouping departments

hierarchy in the sciences.

Some

day,

it

may

become a question whether one department,

or another,
final
it

is

to

impose on the University a

;

law of instruction

but, for the present,

is

a domestic matter, to be settled at

home

before inviting the world to interfere.

fore, the

There

volume
sale,

will

not

be
to

published, or
the
press
for

offered
notice.

for

or

sent

For the same

acknowledgment.
it

reason, the

volume needs no

Unless the questions which

raises or suggests

seem

to

you so personal

as to need action,

you have probably no other

than
that

personal

interest

of avoiding the of us are required

discussion altogether.
to look ten, or

Few

twenty years, or a whole gen

order to realise what
will

eration ahead, in

then be the relation of history to physics or

LETTER TO TEACHERS
physiology, and even if

we make
by the

the attempt,
difficulty

we

are

met

at the outset

of
in

allowing for our personal error,

so delicate a calculation,
first

which

is,

an element of the

importance.

error takes the

Commonly, our personal form of inertia, and is more

or less constant and calculable.

the

For myself,
inertia
is

preference

for

movement of
of error in

decided.

The

risk

changing a

long-established course
to

seems always greater

me

than the chance of correction, unless

the elements are

possible in

known more
affairs
;

exactly than

is

human

but the need of

is

determining these elements

all

the greater
is

on that account
first

and

this

volume

only a

experiment towards calculating their past,

present and future values.

Mathematicians assume the right to choose,

within the limits of logical contradiction, what

path they please in

reaching

their
to the

results,

provided that

when they come

end of

their process, they consent to test their result

vi

LETTER TO TEACHERS
facts of experience.

by the
If I

More than

this

cannot fairly be asked of historians.

call

this

volume a

letter, it

is

only

because that literary form affects to be more

colloquial
scientific

or

more familiar than the usual

;

treatise

but

such

letters

never

require

response, even when they invite

in the present
case, the subject of

one

and

the letter involves a problem which will cer

tainly exceed the limits of a life already far

advanced, so that
possible, will

its

solution, if a solution is

have

to

be reached by a new

generation.

16 February, 1910.

CHAPTEK

THE PEOBLEM
The mechanical theory
verse three of the uni
science
for

governed

physical
years.

hundred
the

Directly

suc

ceeding
universe
will of
it

theological
as

scheme of a
unity by the

existing

and eternal Creator, affirmed or assumed the unity and

an
infinite

indestructibility
as

of

Force
or

scientific

dogma

Energy, Law, which

Conserva

or

was called the

tion of

Law

of the
this

Energy.
of

Under
in

Law
of

the

quantity

matter
;

the

universe

remained invariable

the

sum
;

move

ment remained constant

indestructible
"

nothing

energy was was added

;

LETTER TO TEACHEKS
"

nothing was lost nothing was created, nothing was destroyed. Towards the middle of the nine
;

teenth
a
in

century,

that

is,

about

1850,

new

school of physicists appeared

Europe, dating from an Essay on the Motive Power of Heat, published by Sadi Carnot in 1824, and made

famous by the names of William

son,

Thom

Lord Kelvin, in England, and of Clausius and Helmholz in Germany,

who announced a second law of dynam The first law said that Energy was ics.
never
lost
;

the second said that

;

it

was
of

never

saved

that,

while the

sum

energy in the universe might remain

constant,

granting

that

the

universe

was a closed box from which nothing

could
escape,

the

higher
to

powers
fall

of

energy
.and
limit.

tended

always

lower,

that this

process had no known

THE PKOBLEM

The second law was

briefly stated
"

by

Thomson
Tendency

in a paper
in

On

a universal

Nature

to the Dissipation

of Mechanical

Energy,"

published in

October 1852, which

as
as

is

now

as classic

Kepler

or

Newton

Laws, and quite

education.

necessary to a scientific

Quoted exactly from Thomson s "Math ematical and Physical Papers" (Cam
bridge, 1882, Vol.
i,

p. 514),
:

the

Law

of

Dissipation runs thus

"

1.

There

is at

present in the material

dissi

world a universal tendency to the pation of mechanical energy.

"

2.

Any

restoration

of

mechanical

energy, without more than an equivalent

of dissipation,
is

impossible in inanimate
is

material processes, and

effected

probably never

either

by means of organized matter, endowed with vegetable life or

to

subjected
creature.

the will of

an animated

4
"

LETTER TO TEACHEES
3.

Within a
the earth
finite

finite

period of time

past,

must have been, and

period of time to come,

within a

the earth must again be, unfit for the

habitation of
tuted, unless

man

as at present consti

operations have been, or

are to be performed,
sible

which are impos under the laws to which the known

going on at present in the
subject."

operations

material world, are

When

this

young man of twenty-

eight thus tossed the universe into the

ash-heap, few scientific authorities took

him

seriously

but after the

first

gasp

of surprise physicists began to give

qualified
absolute.
7

him

support which soon became This conclusion made much

"

noise/

says
"

Ostwald

("

L Energie,"
Helm-

Paris, 1910)

the more because

holz and Clausius gave in their adher

ence to

it.

We

owe

to the latter the

THE PKOBLEM
following

the

The Entropy of Universe tends toward a maximum.

formula
:

To

physicists,
"a

this

law

of

Entropy
con
familiar
to

became
ception/

prodigiously

abstract

phrase

according to of M. Poincare

the
;

but

the

vulgar and ignorant historian it meant only that the ash-heap was constantly
increasing
in
size
;

while

the
less

public

understood

little

and cared

about

Entropy, and the literary

class

knew

only that the Newtonian universe, in which they had been cradled, admitted

no

energy in the solar system, where the planets, at the end of their
loss of

planetary

years,

returned

exactly

to

their positions at the beginning.

tation
ever,

Gravi

showed no waste of energy what except where friction occurred, but

off like

had planets gone

never
returned,

comets, and

the

scholar

of

1860

LETTER TO TEACHERS
still

would

have feared

to

question the
asserted
reso

scientific

dogma which

lutely,

without qualification, the fact If no that nothing in nature was lost.

other assurance had satisfied

him,

all

by the famous outburst of eloquence with which Tyndoubts

were

silenced

dall

concluded

his

Lectures in
of
Motion."

1862,

on

"

Heat
can
that

as a

Mode

Old

men
ing

still

recall

how, after explain

of the
is

"the

quantity

solar

heat intercepted by the earth

f

only
>"

the total radiation

2,300,000,000

Tyndall refrained from telling what became of the heat not intercepted by the earth, and went on to expatiate
with enthusiasm on the unity of the
universe and
"

its

energy
stored

Look

at the integrated energies of

our world,

the

power of our

THE PROBLEM
coalfields;

our

winds and

rivers;
!

our

fleets,

armies

and

guns

What

are they?

They
of

are all generated

s

a portion

the sun
to

by which energy
f
is

does not amount

the whole.

This, in fact,

the entire
intercepted

fraction of the

sun

force
reality

by the
but a
into
all

earth,

and in

we convert
fraction

small fraction

of

this

Multiplying energy. our powers by millions of millions, we do not reach the sun s expenditure. And, still, notwithstanding this enor

mechanical

mous
history

drain,

in

the

lapse

of

human

we

are unable to detect a dimi

nution of his store.

largest
terrestrial

Measured by our
standards,
is

such
;

a
it

reservoir of
is

power

infinite
rise

but

our

privilege

to

above

these

standards,

and

to regard the sun

him-

LETTER TO TEACHEES

self as a

speck in infinite extension, a mere drop in the universal sea.

analyse

We
is

the

space

in

which
is

he

immersed, and
of
his

which

the
to

vehicle

power.

We

pass

other

systems and other suns, each pouring forth energy like our own, but still

without infringement of the law which reveals the midst immutability in

which recognises incessant transference and conversion, but neither

of

change,

final
ises

gain nor
the
is

loss.

This law general

of

aphorism

Solomon,

that

there

nothing new under the sun,

by teaching us to detect everywhere, under its infinite variety of appearances, the same primeval force. To nature
nothing
can be

added

from nature
;

the nothing can be taken away of her energies is constant, and

sum
the

utmost

man

can do in the pursuit of

THE PROBLEM
physical
truth,

or in

the
is

application
to shift

of physical knowledge,

the

constituents of the never-varying total,

and out of one of them

to

form another.

The law

of conservation rigidly excludes

both creation and annihilation.

Waves
to

may change
waves,
for

to

ripples

and ripples

magnitude may be substituted number, and number for magni

asteroids

tude,

may

aggregate to suns,

suns

may

resolve themselves into florae

and

faunae,

and

floras

and faunae melt

is

in air,

the flux of power

It
rolls
all

eternally

the same.

in

music through
energy,
well as the

the ages, and

terrestrial
life as

the manifestations of
display
of

phenomena,
its

are

but

the

modulations of

rhythm."

This magisterial tone irritated some

of the

new

physicists to

the point of

hinting that Tyndall deliberately mis-

10

LETTER TO TEACHEKS
the
facts

stated
lest

of

physics,

for

fear

some

one should drive him into

a logical snare, ending in the necessity In flat con of admitting a Creation.

tradiction to Tyndall,

Kelvin and Tait

"

affirmed that

"

the same primeval force

could

never
;

be
that

detected,
all

much
s

less

recovered

nature

energies

were slowly converting themselves into

heat and vanishing in space, until, at
the

nothing would be left except a dead ocean of energy at its lowest say of heat at 1 Centi possible level,
last,

grade,

or

272

C.

below

freezing

point of water,

and incapable of doing

any work whatever, since work could be done only by a fall of tension, as
water does work in falling to sea-level. Between such authorities the unscien
tific

student could
all

not interfere.

Na

turally,

his

sympathies were with

THE PEOBLEM
Tyndall.
sidereal
for

11

The

idea

that

the

entire

universe could

eternity

have gone on and dissipating energy,

never restoring it, seemed, at the least, unreasonable while the astronomers
;

drew up

lists

of nebulae

by hundreds

in the very act of generating universes,

and the geologists showered the theory with rocks in order to show that the
sun had already reached an age many times greater than Thomson was willing
to allow
it.

knew, although everyone what had caused the inequali explained

ties

No

one

of energy
of

least of all

could the
assert

historian

human

society

or

deny that energy could be created or

could
not be
destroyed.
his
lost

The

subject

was

beyond Church had

province.
its

Since the
the

authority,
into

historian

s field

had shrunk

narrow

12

LETTEE TO TEACHEES

limits of rigorously
strictly

human

action

but,

within

those

limits,

he

was

energy with which his tory had to deal could not be reduced directly to a mechanical or physicoclear that the

chemical

process.

He
;

was

therefore

obliged either to deny that social energy

was an energy at all or to assert that it was an energy independent of physi cal laws. Yet how could he deny that
energy was a true form of energy when he had no reason for existence, as
social

professor, except to describe

its

and discuss

acts

He
its

could neither doubt nor

dispute

existence

without

putting

an end

to his

own

and therefore he
adherent

was of necessity a

Vitalist, or

of the doctrine that Vital

Energy was

independent of mechanical law. VitaStudents who lists are of many kinds.

are curious on the subject can consult

THE PBOBLEM
the
"

13

Vitalismus als Geschichte und als

Lehre,"

by Dr. Hans Driesch

but they
will

(Leipzig,
it

1905)
little

understand
than

better

afterwards

before.

For human history the

to

essential
social

was

convince

itself

that

energy,

though

a true energy, was

governed

by laws of its own. To the generation of Lord Macaulay and George Bancroft, the problem
seemed scarcely
ignore
serious.

the

dispute,

They could since Thomson

agreed with Tyndall so far as to admit

that, for

human

purposes, the

Dissipa

tion of Solar

Energy was so slow as to be indistinguishable from Conservation

of Energy.

The

historian never

even

took the trouble to inform himself of

the

Indeed bearings of the problem. at that time, the Universities showed

a nervous

unwillingness to teach phi-

14

LETTER TO TEACHEKS
at to
all,

losophy
averse

and

were

especially

all

philosophies

of history,

whether

Hegel or by Comte, by Buckle or by Karl Marx, The law that history was not a science,
inspired

by

and that
calmed

society
all

was not an organism, serious effort and histo

;

rians turned to the

collection of facts,
to

as the geologists turned

the
it

collec

tion

of

fossils.

For
and

them

was a
profited

happy
by
it.

period,

literature

problem was by no means simple, and the historian might have made himself a very competent
In
fact,

the

professor of Physics without the small

est

profit

to

history.

Kelvin

law
of

asserted

the

constant

dissipation

energy, but the process was far more

complex than appeared in this state ment. Energy had a way of coming

THE PKOBLEM

15

and going in phases of intensity much more mysterious than the energy itself.
Catastrophe

was

its

law.

The

sun

according to Tyndall, wasted into space

practically
all
its

energy

except

an

imperceptible portion that happened to fall on the earth but even this por
;

tion

was

not

utilisable,

for

human
Ice,

purposes, to
sea-level,

boil

pint

of water, at

without

assistance.

water, and vapor were phases sharply distinct. So the imperceptible portion of solar energy which fell on the
earth,

reappeared by some mysterious process, to an infinitely minute measure,

in the singular form of intensity

as Vital

known
phase always
or

Energy, and disappeared by a

change
of
as

sudden and violent

known
about to

death.

Man

had

flattered himself that

he knew

was

know

something that would

16

LETTEE TO TEACHEKS
his

make
itself,

own energy
he

intelligible

to

but

invariably

found,

on

further inquiry, that the more he knew,

the less he understood.

was,
least,

Vital energy
;

perhaps,

an

intensity

so,

at

he

vaguely
all
!

hoped

he

knew

and yet the analogy between Heat and Vital

;

nothing at No one

knew anything

Energy, suggested by Thomson in his Law of Dissipation, and received by

the public with
sleepy
indifference,

was insisted upon by the physicists in accents that became sharper with every
generation, until
it

began to pass the

bounds of

scientific restraint.

Already

in 1884, Faye, in

Origin of the World/ fairly threatened mankind with

his
"

its
"

doom

We

must therefore renounce those

fancies

brilliant

by which we

try

to

THE PKOBLEM
deceive
ourselves
in

17
to

order

endow

with unlimited posterity, and to regard the universe as the immense

theatre on which
is

man

to be developed a

spontaneous progress without end. On the contrary, life must disappear, and
the

grandest

material

works

of

the

human
degrees

race will have to be effaced

by
few

under

the

action

of

physical forces which will survive

for

man
:

time.

Nothing
!

will

remain

etiam periere ruince

Thus,

it

seemed, that whatever the

universities

thought

or

taught,

the

physicists regarded society as an organ ism in the only respect which seriously concerned historians It would die
:

If

life

was

to

disappear, the
as Social
to

form of
Energy,
increase

Vital Energy

known
of

must
the

also,

presumably, go
the

Entropy
2

Universe,

thus

18

LETTER TO TEACHEES
at
least to the

proving
sary and

degree neces

sufficient

tion in historians,

produce convic that History was a

to

Science.

Although
as

Faye
his

settled

this

point, as a matter of
as

thermodynamics,
successors

early

1884,

in
it

authority have

gone

on

repeating

with
ever

increasing
since.

energy of expression
these

To

outbursts

of

prophecy the story will have to recur, but for the moment, the only point
requiring insistence
is

that sixty years

of progress in science have only inten sified the assertion that Vital Energy

obeys the law of thermal energy. The sketch of Kelvin s Life and Work by
Professor

Andrew Gray,

Professor of

Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, published in 1908, renews

warning in almost angry terms. Once more he asserts, as an axiom of

the

THE PROBLEM
physics, that all

19

work

is

done by con
or
:

version
into

of

one

energy,

intensity,
"

another, and a lower

is

If this

conversion

prevented,

all

processes

which
cease,

involve

such

conversion
vital

must

pro be the height of imprudence to trust to the prospect, not

cesses.

and among these are

...

It

will

infrequently referred
time, of

to,

at

the present

drawing on the energy locked

.
.

up

in the atomic structure of matter.

After a large part of the whole existent energy has gone to raise the dead level
of things, no difference of temperature,

adequate
possible,

to

work

between,

will

be
all

and the inevitable death of

will

things

approach

with

headlong

rapidity."

This
last

may

serve to represent the very

physicists.

opinion of
of

The
for

latest

expression

metaphysics,

the

20

LETTEK TO TEACHERS
shall

present purpose,

be taken from

the notes added by Eduard von Hart-

mann
"

to the last

edition of his works,

dated in 1904:If the social consciousness of today

rebels so

strongly against the thought

that vital processes will

in

come

to

an end
is

the

world,

the

chief

reason

because society has indeed absorbed the the first principle of thermodynamics,
conservation
second, the

of

energy,

but

not

the

progressive

degradation of

energy by dissipation and levelling of intensities and, in consequence, has

;

erroneously interpreted the

first

law as

though
In

it

contained an eternal guaranty

. . .

of the endlessness of vital processes

reality, the

only question is whether, in the actual result, the world-process

will

work
of

itself

out slowly in prodigious

lapse

time,

according

to

purely

THE PROBLEM
physical laws
its
;

21 will

or whether

it

find

end by means of some metaphysical

resource

when

it

has

reached

its

cul

minating point. Only in the last case would its end coincide with the fulfil

ment of a purpose or
first

object

in

the

long period of purposeless existence would follow after the culmi

case, a

nation of

(Ausgewahlte Werke, vin, pp. 572-573. Leipzig, 1904.) uni Thomson s famous paper on
life."
"

versal tendency in Nature to the Dissi

pation

of

"

Energy

was published in

Seven years afterwards, Charles Darwin announced his law of Evolu

1852.
tion,

which involved a

contradiction,
to

as

von
laws

Hartmann

implies,

both

the

of thermodynamics.

Thom

son, physicist

and mathematician, had

thought only of providing the energy Darwin necessary to move his world
;

22

LETTER TO TEACHEKS
physicist

neither

nor

mathematician,

took

the

necessary

Possibly, if

energy as given. he thought about it at all,

he assumed the
as the

Law

of Conservation

Law

mechanical equivalent of Lyell s of Uniformity but he seemed

;

scrupulously careful to
either principle.

avoid

asserting

On

his

own account
to

he

never

committed
that,

himself
the

the

doctrine
cal

within

geologi

record,

organization
risen
to

had

largely

advanced,

or

higher powers,

but he did
followers to

assert, and permitted his assert much more broadly

that

"the

inhabitants of the world, at

each

successive

period in

its

history,

have beaten
race for
life,
"

their

predecessors in
are, in so far,

the

and
;

higher

in the scale

meaning probably that

they were better fitted to their condi but conveying the idea that tions,

THE PKOBLEM
their
vital

23
risen

powers

had

from

higher by the spontaneous struggle of the organism for life. This

lower
to

understanding of Darwinism had little to do with Darwin, whose

popular
great service,
consisted

in the

field

of history,
in

by no means
either

his

per

sonal theories
tion, or

of natural selec
of uniform
all

of adaptation, or
;

evolution

which might be

aband

oned without affecting his credit for bringing all vital processes under the
law
of

development
or
to

or

evolution,

whether upward
immaterial
history

downward being
principle

the

that

all

must be studied
naturally

as a science.

Society

and

instinctively

adopted the view that Evolution must

be upward
feat

and Haeckel performed the

of measuring the height of each

step from protozoa

up

to

man

but

still

24

LETTER TO TEACHEKS

without further attempt to account for the source or the nature of the numer
ous energies implied in the process of
elevation.

Apparently he

felt

no need

of invoking any energy beyond that of

uniform solar heat, and took for granted

the power of
potential
all
its

organisms to

rise

in

by
at

absorption.

Thus,

the

same

moment, three
energy were in
:

contradictory laws of
force,
1.

all

The
in

equally useful to science Law of Conservation, that

nothing could be added, and nothing

lost,

the

sum
but

of energy.

2.

The
must

Law
be

of Dissipation, that nothing could

added,

that
3.

Intensity
of

always be
lution,

lost.

The Law
Energy
smallest

Evo
be

that

Vital

could

added, and raised indefinitely in poten

tial,

without

the

apparent

compensation.

THE PROBLEM
Although the physicists are
clear in defining the
far

25

from

term Vital Energy,

and are exceedingly timid in treating

of Social Energy, they are positive that

the law of Entropy applies to

processes

all vital

even
"

more

rigidly
is,"

than

to

mechanical.
("

Thus

it

says Ostwald
p.

Energie,"

Paris,

1910,

116),
old,
is

"

that animated beings always

young."

grow

and never

As
it

the point

pivotal for evolution,

must be under

stood as admitted in the

dation.

Law

of

Degra

One

of the

latest

authorities,

M.
Vie

Dastre, professor of physics at the

his
"

Sorbonne, in
et la

volume
(Paris, in

called

"

La

Mort

1902),
"

lays

down the dogma

Energy ends
Energy."

one line

Vital

as its last term, in

thermal
is

He
;

admits that this rule

it

too

absolute

has

exceptions
:

but

the exceptions are not serious

26
"

LETTEK TO TEACHEES

The

cycle of energy ends occasion

ally in mechanical energy (movement),

and in some smaller degree, in other

energies, as for example, in the electric

energy produced by nervous action and the muscles in all animals or in

;

functions of special
rays,
finally

organs,

as

in
;

the
or

torpedoes, in

and

thunder-fish

the

luminous
;

energy

of

phosphorescent animals

but these are

secondary matters." The essential is that the second law of thermodynamics rules biology with an authority fully
as
"

despotic

as

it

asserts
is

in

physics.

If chemical energy

the generative
vital

maternal
calorific

form of the

energies,

energy is the form of waste the form which (dechet), of excrement

;

degraded, according to the expression of the physicists. ... In the animal

is

organism,

heat

is

transformed

into

THE PROBLEM
"

27

it is 109). (p. dissipated nothing the The animal world expends energy has accumu which the vegetable world
:
"

lated."

vegetable world draws its energy from the sun, and the animals end by restoring it, in the form of
"

The

dissipated heat, to the cosmic

space."

Animal This teaching is explicit. energies accent and emphasize the law
of

physics

that

nature,

always

and

everywhere, tends to an equilibrium by Mechanical its intensities. levelling

apparent exceptions, like gravitation, but animal energies All grow old and die. admit none.
energies

admit

This

is

the

teaching of physics,

and

although most physicists show caution

in

defining

exactly

what

they mean
as

by vital announce

energy,
it,

the

law,

they
a form

is

relentless.

For human
is

purposes, whatever does

work

28

LETTER TO TEACHERS

of energy,

and

since

historians

exist

only to recount and

sum up
as

the work

that society has done, either as State, or

as

Church, as

civil or

military, as

intellectual or physical, organisms, they

will,
if

they obey the

physical

law,

hold that society does work by degrad

ing its energies. On the other hand, if the historian follows Haeckel and
the evolutionists, he should
vital energy,

hold that

by

raising itself to higher

potentials,
tion,

without apparent compensa

accomplished its work in defiance of both the laws of thermo

has

dynamics.

Down

to the

end of the nineteenth

century nothing greatly mattered, since the actual forces could be fairly well
calculated

or

accounted for on either

principle, but schools of applied

ics are

mechan

apt to get into trouble by using

THE PKOBLEM
contradictory methods.

29

One

process or

the other acquires an advantage.

The

weaker submits,
the
difficulty

but in this instance,

the

of

was

extreme.

naming That the

weaker

Evolutionist

should surrender his conquests seemed quite unlikely, since he felt behind

him the whole momentum

success

of popular
as

and sympathy,
all

and stood

heir-apparent to

the aspirations of

mankind.
in

About him were arranged

like

battalions,

an

army,
of nearly

the

energies of

government, of society, of
of socialism,
all

democracy,
literature

and
was
to

art, as well as
left

hope, and
all

whatever
striving

of

instinct,

illustrate

not

the

Descent
hostis

but the Ascent

of

Man.

The

and enemy, was the Degradationist, who could have no friends, because he proclaimed the
generis, the outlaw

humani

30

LETTER TO TEACHERS

steady

and

fated

enfeeblement
;

and

s energies but that he should abandon his laws seemed

extinction of all nature

more preposterous had he asserted them so

still

idea.

Never

aggressively,

or with such

dogmatic authority.
possession

He

every technical school in the world, and even the primary schools were largely under
his control.

held

undisputed

of

His second law of ther

its

modynamics held

place

in

every

text-book of science.

The

Universities

and higher branches of education were

greatly,

his

not wholly, controlled by methods. The field of mathe

if

matics had become his.

serious
intellectual
difficult
is

He had
Few

no

rival.

things

are

more

far a society

than to judge how looking one way and

working in another, for the points are shifting and the rate of speed is uncer-

THE PEOBLEM
tain.

31

The

acceleration

of

movement
resis

seems rapid, but the

tance to deflection,
the
pass
speed,
rapidity,
so

inertia, or

may
that

increase
society

with

might

through
like

phase
comet,

after

phase of without noting

If a simpler

deflection in its thought.

figure
to

is

needed, society

may

be likened
a
rising

an island surrounded by

ocean which silently floods its defences. One after another the defences have

been abandoned, and society has climbed to higher ground supposed to be out
of clanger.

So the
for

classic

Gods were

abandoned
astic

monotheism, and schol philosophy was dropped in favor

;

of the Newtonian

but the classic Gods

and

the

scholastic

philosophy

were

always popular, and the newer philoso

phies

won

their victories
force.

by developing
is

compulsory

Inertia

the law

32

LETTEK TO TEACHERS

of

mind
is

as

well

as

of

matter,
;

and

inertia

a form

of instinct
it

yet in

western civilisation
its

has never held

own.

The pessimism
ment,
if
it

or

unpopularity of
its

the law will not prevent

develops

enforce
force,

superior

even
go.

if it leads

where no one wants

is

to
is

The proof

that

the

law

already enforced in every field except ing that of human history, and even

human

history has not wholly escaped.

In physics it rules with uncontested In physiology, the old army of sway.

Evolutionists
so
serious
full

have

suffered

defections

no discipline remains. account of the situation would

that

need an amount of knowledge that is now granted to no one but the most
;

trifling

popular

science

is

enough

for

popular teachers like ourselves.

THE PEOBLEM

33

Everyone knows that Darwin owed

much

of his science as well as of his

success to Sir Charles Lyell,

plied

who sup
of uni

him with
the
s

the

doctrine
to

formity and
it.

evidence

support
or theo

Darwin

own assumptions

were quite sufficiently difficult of proof, without adding the doctrine of but Sir Charles s ability uniformity
ries
;

and authority carried the point in spite that uniformity of Kelvin s protest
could
not
the

be

admitted

as

possible

under
namics.

second
s

law of

thermody

system on several broad resting assumptions of fact, became not merely a physiological, but even more a philo
of evolution,

Lyell

conservative

dogma, and in a literary view the Victorian epoch point of rested largely, on perhaps chiefly,
sophical

the faith that society had but to

fol

low where science led

3

to

34
"Move

LETTER TO TEACHERS
upward, working out the beast,
let

And

the ape and tiger die

in order to attain perfection.

nite series of imperceptible

An
steps,

infi

con

tinuous under uniform conditions since

the earliest traces of organic

life,

and

always

tending

upwards

to

higher
ac

intensities,

tensions,

potentials.

cording to the growing complexity of the organism, had already taken the

dogma, and bridged the gap between two phases of thought.

place of religious

With

sense

of

vast

relief,

the

generation which began life in 1850, embraced the new creed, not so much

because

it

was
;

proved,

as

because

it

was convenient
stant

but

it

met with
side

in

difficulties

on

the

of

the

Darwinists
evolutionists

themselves.

The warmest
least

were

the

confident,

not

only

about

adaptation

and

the

THE PEOBLEM
struggle
chiefly,

35

for

existence,

but

also,

and

Heer s re about uniformity. searches on the arctic flora, already

cited

by

Sir

Charles
of
his

Lyell
"

in

the

tenth

edition

Principles,"

(London, 1867), seemed to upset the law of uniformity from top to bottom and to substitute a sweeping law of
catastrophe
;

so

that already

in 1879,

Sapor ta, in his History of the World

of
Plants,
asserted

than

absolute

nothing less cosmic revolution in

that

conditions could account for the changes

in

northern
period

vegetation.
since

During the
eocene,

whole

the

the

temperature of the planet had steadily

declined.
"The

phenomenon
"

to

which
no

the lowering of
referred,"

temperature must be
Saporta,
is
it

said

in

way

peculiar to

Europe
it,

has noth
or

ing sudden about

or

accidental,

36
transient.
at

LETTEE TO TEACHEKS

We
its

pointed out
;

its

origin

the

end of the eocene

progress

we have
increasing

marked

by

its

intensity in the
its

polar regions, and

by

gradual

extension

thence

towards

the south.

beginning of the oligocene, the vegetation of the north ern temperate zone changes character

At

the

new

elements, coming from the north,

and marking
refrigeration,

the

first

progress of a

introduce

and propagate

themselves.

We have

studied the signs

of this revolution,

by means of which
little

the differences of latitude tend

little to
is

by

accentuate themselves.

impossible
this

not to admit,

... It when we
nothing

consider
stops,

march

which

and which continues with moder

and regularity, the influence of

ation

cosmic

phenomenon
globe

embracing
(p.

the
322).

terrestrial

altogether."

THE PEOBLEM

37
"

The
nise

inference followed

We

recog

from this point of view as from others, that the world was once young
then adolescent
;

that

it

the age of
late,

maturity
a

has even passed man has come

of

when

beginning
des

physical
globe,

decadence
domain."

had struck
("

the

his
p.

Le Monde
be
to

Plantes,"

109.)

Nothing could to Darwin but

following.

more

fatal,
s

not

Darwin
said

popular
that

As Newton
a

he

was

never

Newtonian,
but

so

Darwin

might perhaps have said that he was

never
a

Darwinian,

his

popular

influence lay in the law that evolution

had developed
from
lower

itself in

unbroken order
Kelvin

to

higher.

had

indeed, flatly contradicted this assump

tion of fact, but

had done

so

from the
a

physicist

point of view, as

matter

38

LETTER TO TEACHEKS
heat
s

of solar

and

terrestrial

cooling;

while Saporta

studies of vegetation, to
so

everybody
tically

astonishment,
s

drama
of

confirmed Kelvin

mathematics
streams

that,

though

the

two

thought continued to flow in opposite in 1878 directions, Saporta already

had
"

the

courage

to

incline

to

the
years

bold

suggestion

made

some

ago by Dr. Blandet, and approved by the late M. d Archiac," to the effect
that, in times before the cretaceous,

especially well

shown

in

the extrava the sun

in
as

gance of the carboniferous,

equaled meter.
the
orbit of

Mercury

dia

The long epochs known

the

Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous and Eocene allowed ample time for
shrinkage
before

the

Miocene

first

proved by its temperate vegetation, that the sun had approached its present

THE PROBLEM

39

diameter, and could no longer equably

warm

the world.

Such

an

adhesion

to

the

law

of

thermodynamics, only twenty years after Darwin and Lyell had established their system on the law of Conser
vation,

seemed
at

to strike a

blow
lution

the theory

of

very serious upward evo

it.

as

the

world

understood

The
Kelvin

violent
s

contradiction

between

Degradation

and

Darwin
so

Elevation
grant,

was

so

profound,

fla

mankind, that the historian of human society must be

so vital to

supposed to have watched with agon

ised interest the direction

which science
decision

should

take

since

the

of

palaeontologists
his

would
they

fatally

decide
to

own.

If

should
of
;

adhere

the

high

authority

Saporta,

the

biologists

must follow

and then the

40

LETTER TO TEACHERS
of

historian

man would
entered
into

find

himself
as

facing

responsibility

such
his

had

never before
nation.

imagi
since

Thirty

years

have

passed
"

Monde des Saporta published his Plantes avant P Apparition de FHomme,"

and a whole
gably
generation

has indefatipublished

collected,

discussed,

and
and

re-discussed

the

evidences,

with

results recorded in

a library of books

in

score

of

great

geological

museums.

With

the truths that have

been established or the theories that have

been proposed, historians need trouble themselves little, or not at all, further
than
to

ask what theories are today

taught,
or

actually

are

accepted

standard

authorities.
is

For

by American by

purposes, the object

best reached

restricting the inquiry to the last ten

or fifteen years, and, as far as possible,

THE PKOBLEM
to the

41

schools

of the

tinent,

because

European con distance makes both

impersonal. the standard
said
to

teachers

and

teaching

Beginning with
authority
in

France,
is

geology

be

Lapparent s Treatise (3 vols. Paris, 1906), and to this the inquirer turns
to

ask
s,

whether

Darwin

ideas,

or

Kelvin
schools.
"If

have prevailed in the French The answer is easily found:

is

there
(Vol.

one
in,

fact,"

says

Lap"that

parent,

p.

1951),
especially

palaeontology,

and

the

branch of that science which concerns

the vegetable world, has put in
evidence,
it

strong

is

assuredly the progressive

diminution
tudes of our
of
fied

of

heat in the high

lati

globe."

Among

number
satis

explanations suggested,
all

none

the conditions except that of

the

M.

Blandet,

diminution

of

the

42

LETTER TO TEACHERS
"

Out apparent diameter of the sun. this of side conception, the maintenance
of the solar heat
cable
(p.
is
.

absolutely inexpli
.

1954).
to

One
of

cause alone,

according
namics,
is

the

laws of

thermody
to

capable

preserving the
the

solar energy without appealing

quite

inadequate
;

sources

this

is

of outside help the phenomenon of

condensation

in

the

sun.

By
able

the

means of such
orific

condensation,

the cal
to

power

of

the

sun

is

maintain

itself

without

sensible

loss,

by means of a lessening of apparent diameter which would need several

thousand
to

years

to

become perceptible
apparatus.
.
.

our
if,

most

delicate

But
it

in our days, the sun, reduced as

still

is,

undergoes

this

movement of
its

concentration

necessary to maintain

energy, what must have been the dif-

THE PROBLEM
ference

43
at

of

its

dimensions

other

epochs

from
is

what

they

are

now?
hy

Nothing

more

logical than this

while irreproach pothesis, and since, able from the astronomic point of view,
it

is

alone

adequate

to

explain the

palaeothermal phenomena, we think we cannot do better than propose it for

the adhesion of
geologists."

Nothing could be more innocent in

intention,

or

at

least

in

appearance,

than this adhesion to the second law

of

thermodynamics, this harmonising of several great branches of science,

this unifying of nature
;

but

its

conse

quences to the old law of

Evolution

and

to

the

school

of

Darwin

were

beyond
to

Lapparent went on indicate some of them, and first the

disguise.

necessary abandonment of LyelPs

of uniformity
:

law

44

LETTER TO TEACHERS
"Let

us content ourselves, then with

of this solu

indicating the possibility

tion,

while affirming, contrary to the doctrines of the uniformitarian school,

that the ancient history of our

planet of

has

unrolled

itself

in

the

midst

external conditions very different from those which

now surround
as

us."

While Lapparent
of solar shrinkage

offered this theory

only a possible solution, other geologists were working

on a
has

corollary

to

the
of

theory,

which

become

one

the

commonest
Solar

foundations of

their

teaching.

shrinkage might perhaps be suggested as a doubtful possibility, but terrestrial

shrinkage, which rests on the same law, seems to be now commonly admitted
as a reasonably
terrestrial
tive,

orthodox dogma.
is

Yet

shrinkage
involves

mere deriva
shrinkage

which

solar

THE PKOELEM
as
its

45

logical

and mathematical con

comitant.

If adopted as a fundamental
geology,
it

law
as a

of

must be admitted

fundamental law of solar physics, since the one is as inseparable from

other as a Siamese
twin.

the

Natu
to
is

rally

the
;

theory

is

not
is
;

conceded
but
;

be

true

no
;

theory
is

it

and the taught chance is now small that any geolog ical physicist will forego the temptation
convenient
it

of using

M. Blandet
for

theory as law.
old
for

Fortunately
geologists

the
as

school
all

of

as well

schools

of historians,

the

few certainties of

geology as of history are so easily read

in

opposite

senses,

that,

in

practice,

and ignore, every teacher can teach what he pleases. Pure geologists still adhere more or less strictly to the
uniformitarian
creed

and

reject

the

46

LETTER TO TEACHERS

conclusions of

Heer and

his followers.

Geological
if

physicists

still

teach

that

the second

controlled all

law of thermodynamics history from the gaseous

glacial

nebula
certainly

to

the

epoch,

it

has
or

controlled

the

few days

years since the ice-cap retired from the

Niagara

river.

In that

case,

man

be

came the most advanced type of physi cal decadence, no longer at the top but
at the

bottom of the ladder, in face of

accelerated extinction.

At what
rium which

precise

moment

the

sun

reached, under this theory, the equilib

gave the utmost

life,

exuber

only a specialist can but, from the language of their text-books, a reader gathers
ance to organic venture to say
;

that the energy of vegetable growth

is

supposed to have reached

early
as

its

climax as
"periode

the

carboniferous,

THE PEOBLEM
de luxe,
73)
;

47
"

s il

en fut jamais
this

(Saporta,

and that when

lost
its

etation

amazing veg wonderful power, as

(Lappawas followed rent, n, 1027), by an animal growth astonishing equally

it

shown

in

the

coal- formations

which There
gan
life
!

lasted

into

the miocene period.

we

are

told,

degradation be
of

At
are

the

end

the

miocene,

both vegetable

and
to

animal
offer

forms
proof

of

declared

that

the poles could no longer support their

previous

exuberance.
that

This

teaching

equable tempera whether or ture, low, which had high prevailed from the poles to the equator

assumes

the

gave place to climatic differences con sequent on the sun having shrunk to

wards

its

present

diameter.

Nature

instantly

showed
"

energy.

In

of shrinkage spite of the multitude

the

48

LETTER TO TEACHEES
beings which

of

have disappeared
says

at

different epochs/
"I

Gaudry

("Essai,"

think that the sum of appear 44), ances exceeded that of extinctions down
to

the

end

of

the miocene

period."

The

steady decline continued until the

convulsion of the glacial epoch, when, in the midst of a wrecked solar system,

suddenly appeared. great event occurred,"

"

man

"Since

this

according

to

the organic Lapparent (in, 1655), world has enriched itself with no new

but several forms have disap peared, among those that surrounded the first men and the great herbivorous
species,
:

mammals, already on
seen
little

their decline,

have

their

principal

representatives,

by

little,

quit the scene of the

world."

This statement, as a mere statement

of
fact,

seems to be accepted as rather

THE PKOBLEM
unduly mild; but not yet
admitting
inorganic,
satisfied

49

with
like

that

organic
the

geology,

confirms

dissipation

of

energy down to the present

day,

M.

Lapparent, abandoning all hope that the process can ever be reversed, con
cludes (in, 1961)
is
"

If any
for,
it

new term
seems as

still

to

be looked

though none could be imagined other than an era where the Soul, freed from
the bonds of matter, should

dominate.

Except for this hope there are none but sombre perspectives in sight for
all

that surrounds

us.

The

progress

of the emersion of boreal

destined
to

lands seems

extend from step to step

of the

the

influence

polar
is

ice.

The
far

sun, whose condensation

already

advanced, will soon find in the narrow

ing of
for
its

diameter no sufficient source

its

maintaining
4

heat,

and

large

50

LETTER TO TEACHERS
will appear
to

spots

on

its

surface,

des a

tined

transform themselves into

dark
tion

shell.

The day when

the extinc

of the central luminary shall be

complete, no further physical or physio

logical reaction can take

place

on our

globe,

which

will

then be reduced to

the temperature of space, and the sole light of the stars. But, perhaps, before
arriving there, the globe will have lost
its

oceans and the

pores

its

atmosphere, absorbed
fissures

in

and

of

shell

whose thickness
to
day."

will increase

from day

If one, and by far the most extensive

period of terrestrial history, is already taught in this sense by physicists, all
biology, including

human

history, will

have

also

to

be

re-edited

by

them

according to this lugubrious plan; and the University professor of history as

THE PKOBLEM
it

51

has been hitherto understood, will

soon have urgent need to

make up
or
resist

his
it.

mind whether
to

to

accept
it,

If he decides to accept

he has only hold his tongue, and remain quietly

in the pleasant

meadows of antiquariansufficient

ism, protected as heretofore

venient

and

by the con axiom of the

is

nineteenth century that history

a science,

not
;

and society not an organism

resource

but

if

this

should

fail

him,

his first thought will be to find allies.

He

will seek
to

them among
begin

his Darwinist

friends,

with

but

he will

scarcely finish

the opening chapter of

the last book on Transformation,

tion,

Inheritance,

or

Muta whatever new

expresses
it,

name may,

as one writer

dissimulate creative or destructive force

under the term Evolution, without

dis

covering that the familiar, genial dispute

52

LETTER TO TEACHERS

over the origin of species has turned into a sinister and almost lurid battle
over the extinction of species, for which
the Darwinian theories of survival are
declared

inadequate

to

the

point

of

childishness.

In the place of

minute

variations

extending over indefinite time under uniform conditions, he will find that
views

have

been

put
bear

forward

which
to

resemblance

the
So,

prominently an alarming second law of

thermodynamics.
gist,

Dollo,

one palaeontolo formulated in 1893 the

sections,

law of evolution in three

a
contradiction
to

each
1.

the

old

law.
leaps.

Development has proceeded by

2.

It

is

irreversible.

3.

It is limited.

Another
form
to

authority,

Rosa,

gave

new

an old idea, by showing how variability proceeds according to a law

THE PKOBLEM
of progressive
reduction
;

53

that

is

to

say, every series of forms is destined to

extinction
its

according to the

specialisation.

Even
that

if

degree of law this

"it

were not rigorously exact,

fectly

is

per

exact

to

say

the

number
as

and extent of variations diminishes

the
specialisation
advances."

The

reader,

who marks with some nervous

has certainly advanced by leaps, and that his progress seems to be irreversible, seeks at once to
ness that

Man

know
appeals

whether
its

he
;

shows

signs

of

reaching

limit

and, for an answer,

to

the

of information,

only scientific source the anthropologist.

Unless the inquirer is full of courage, he will be aghast at the confusion of

responses

which
if

his

prayer
is

disturbs.

Yet he knows,
that

he

an evolutionist,
always

Darwinians

have

had

54

LETTER TO TEACHERS
over
the
origin

trouble

and

end of
the
their

Man.

To Darwin and Haeckel

were
as

difficulties

great

as

to

successors.

The mystery
still

of

man was
scientific

then,

and

remains,

scandal

which

has

inevitably

roused

bad temper, and sometimes bad man

ners,
itself.

even in

the

centres

of

science

Every investigator in turn evaded, with more or less dexterity, or broke through, with more or less
the difficulties that sur
;

recklessness,

rounded him

but the

difficulties

out

lived the explanations.

The
to

first

and
fact

most
that,

notorious

was
strict

due

the

while the

theory of evolu

tion

from

lower
to

to

higher
that

made

it

reasonable

assume

man was

descended from that group of animals which resembled him most, and while
there was

no doubt that the

nearest

THE PKOBLEM

55

group which could be supposed to lead up to him was that of the anthropoid
ape, the anthropologists instantly found

so

many

scientific objections to this line

it

of ascent that

had

to

be abandoned

from the

start.
it

anthropoid,

young had re more appeared,

that

The

skull of the

semblance

than

of

its
;

adult

parent, to the

skull

of

man

in other

anthropoid might be a degraded man, but man could not be a developed anthropoid. The search
words,

the

would have
to find

much further back, some earlier mammal with less

to

go

resemblance to man, and therefore with

fewer
evidences
of
descent,

and

less

probability
evidence.

of satisfying

the rules of

Each

step

in

the

ascent

added enormously
proof.

to the difficulties of

Every

evolutionist

knows how

disas-

56

LETTER TO TEACHERS
first failure affected

trously this

anthro
for

pology

nor was the case

bettered

the anthropologist by Cope, who, reason

ing from the teeth, made

man

descend

from an eocene lemur, and through him from the marsupials, without passing

through any known group of anthro a leap backwards cover poids at all
;

ing such vast epochs of unknown time and change, only to end in a type much lower than that of the despised
apes,
as
to

have no more value

for

human
had

history than though, instead of a

hypothetical lemur, the palaeontologists

offered
as

an

ancestor

hypo

thetical lingula of archean time.

fumbling for an ancestry that should have been self-evident, was

this
sufficiently

All

disconcerting
little

to

historians

who

what kind of a pedigree was given them, but greatly wanted to

cared

THE PKOBLEM
be sure of
it
;

57

and who found themselves

embarrassed with a primitive man,

or

probably

variety

of

primitive

men,
eocene

running back without interme

diate links to a hypothetical, primitive,

lemur,

whom

no

one

but

trained palaeontologist could distinguish

from a hypothetical, primitive opossum,

or

weasel

or

squirrel

or
is

any

other

small

form
as

of

what

commonly
historian,
It

known

vermin.

For the

the lemur was a grievance.

offered

no foundation
of

for

any theory, whether

elevation,

conservation,

or

dation,

physical

or

moral.

degra Even the

as

Church had always admitted

doctrine
that
less
;

sound

God might have used

consecutive types for his

more or
creations

but between the hypothetic

existed

lemur and the talking man, no type,

consecutive or other,
to use.

for

God

58

LETTEK TO TEACHEKS

The
to

historian

had certainly a right

complain of this Pharaonic command to adopt a lemurian and marsupial

ancestry,

including

the
;

duck-billed

platypus, and

much more
to

but had he
further,

rashly

attempted

seek

he

might probably have found worse. In deed, frOm the moment when science had
exhausted the whole geological
recent,
series,

pleistocene,

pliocene,

miocene,

oligocene, and part of the eocene,

without

coming upon any

all,

reasonable

or respectable ancestor at

the search

had become,
worse than

for the historian s purposes,

futile.

He

would do much

on the mere hope that his own historical parentage was

better to fall back
lost

under the polar snows, like the carboniferous some where forests,

happier anthropoid had been born and bred in temperate miocene luxury, to

THE PROBLEM

59

be driven southward before the ice-cap

which obliterated every trace of him and of his polar Eden as he slowly
drifted

towards

the

fortieth

parallel.

Such a vague
would
relieve

but

aristocratic

origin

him

from

quartering

the arms of the lemur, and might help

him
to

opossum. Hoping for the best, he next turns

the
last

to suppress the

text-book,

say

Hopf
1909),-

"Human

Species,"

(London,
it

and

first

notes

that

still

rests

the

chief weight of the argument, as

did,

Cope

on the teeth, but in a sense that

even a sincerely convinced evo lutionist. Among the first authorities

startles

quoted

is

Professor Klaatsch of Heidel

in

berg

"As

his
at

opinion,

man by
of
all

no means

stands

the head

living beings with respect to all parts

of his organisation, so too he considers

60

LETTER TO TEACHEKS

that the

human

teeth

are

among the
not sacri

most primitive possessed by any of the

existing
ficed

mammals.

Had man

twelve teeth in the course of his

gradual

have

development, he would now forty-four, the highest number

possessed
mal."

by any land-dwelling

mam

Assuredly, according to actual standards of physical beauty, a man

and
four

still

teeth

with fortywould raise scruples about

more a woman

the

law of evolution
;

from

lower

to

higher

but
the

the

Professor

evidently

regards

modest

number

of

our

actual teeth as a decadence;

and goes

on

say that even as to his molars, man has not progressed beyond the stage of development reached by the
to
"

mammals

in the tertiary

period."

Not

a step have the physiologists advanced

in thirty years

towards proof of any

THE PKOBLEM
rise in vital energy.

61

Greatly concerned
feebleness
in

at

this

evidence of
of

the

evolution

man

from

the

eocene

lemur, the historian of

naturally asks

human society what human senses show

more development than is proved by the teeth. Hopf makes no pretence of

flattery

even

on this point.

"

Speak

ing generally, man, not only in a state of civilisation, but also the primitive the Papuan, for example, savage,

has a

much

less

acute

sense

of smell

than that possessed by

animals."

(Hopf,

240). Finally, though discouraged, the historian probably inquires in what, then, the evolution of man from lower
to

higher

is

believed
it

to

consist

and

he learns that
ordinary with its
foot,

consists in the extra

development
instruments,

of

the

brain,

the
;

hand,

the

and the vocal organs

but even

62

LETTER TO TEACHERS
is

the brain

said

to

show extremely
from that of the

slight real differences

higher
1866).

monkeys.
"

The
in

(Vulpien, Leons. brain has passed through

the
;

evolution
tree of

all

branches

of the

mammals
at
;

it is

highly circum-

voluted

branches

extremity of certain sometimes the richness of its

the

circumvolutions exceeds that of

(Topinard, 334)
;

Man

"

but
in

its

only marked

development

is

weight,
cells.

and

in

number of ganglion

(Hopf, 168).

Inevitably the puzzled historian asks

almost stupidly whether the anthropo logist holds this increase of brain to

prove evolution from lower to higher, and he receives an answer that totally
demoralizes
brain
its
is

him.

The weight

of the

not asserted to be a gauge of

energy.
is

Neither instinct nor rea

son

supposed to have any relation

THE PKOBLEM
to

63

the

weight of the
"

brain

on the

contrary,

in a list of seventeen brains,

the heaviest known,

going from 1729 to 2020 grams, there are seven luna

tics/

and only three men of science, about whose degree of aberration no

statistics

exact
pected.

can be reasonably ex

(Topinard, 216).
is

only the beginning of anthro to from lower evolution pological The anthropologist seems in higher.

This

clined

to

hold

that

what

is

called

genius has no relation with weight of brain but that, even though it had,
;

it

would not help evolution,

is

if

Arndt
of

is

right in asserting that superior mental

a
is

endowment of any kind

degeneration
;

sign

or if

Branco

right in

thinking
sive

it

impossible that the progres

enlargement of the human brain can go on indefinitely without enfeebling

64

LETTER TO TEACHEES
till
it

the body
right
(p.

dies out

or if

Hopf

is

374),
races,

in

admitting that, in
in
intellectual

civilised

increase

power often goes with a narrowing of the jaw and an early loss of the teeth,

and of the

hair,

and in women with an

inability to suckle their children.

To

complete the picture, the anthropologist who hesitates to say in what sense the
be regarded as proving evolution from lower to higher, shows
brain

should

not the least sign of doubt in regard to

the degree to which
particularly as

Man

is

specialised,

hand, his foot

shown by his brain, his and his vocal organs.

to
last

In

fact,
is

according
"the

man

Louis Agassiz, term of a series

beyond which, following the plan on which the whole animal kingdom is built, no further progress is materially
possible,"
("

De

Esprit,"

p. 34),

and

is,

THE PKOBLEM
therefore,
sive

65

under Rosa

law of progres
to

reduction,

destined

be rapidly

extinguished.

Thus

the

physical

geologist

has

frankly and finally gone over to the the palaeontologist has side of Kelvin
;

kept him company or even went before him while the anthropologist is some
;

what painfully
the
physicists,

hesitating,

obedient to
to

but trying

remain

true to humanity, though

scious

acutely con

that

the

two

directions cannot

be

reconciled.

For

many
sort

years

M.

Topinard has held a

of position

as semi-official anthropologist of France,

but he has become incoherent with age, the finding himself caught between
irreconcileable contradictions of science

and sentiment:
concerns us,
last

"The

end, as far

as

we
("

know,"

he says in his
Paris,

volume
5

L Anthropologie,"

66
"

LETTER TO TEACHEKS
;

1900)

our
;

earth
will

will

cease
;

to

be

grow cold will lose its atmosphere and its moisture, and will resemble our actual moon. Previ
it

habitable

ously, evolution,

from progressive will

then
regressive.

become

stationary,

Some

day,

as

Huxley

suggests,

the

lichens, the diatomaceae, the protococcus,

will perhaps be the only beings adapted

to

the

conditions

"

then,

nothing

The

picture seems sad enough, yet

M.

Topinard
according
authorities,

might
to

have

added

that,

his

own

palaeontologist

the

evolution

of

life

on

the earth had ceased to be progressive

some millions of years

passed
into

ago,

and had
period

through
while

its

stationary

regression
;

before

man
"to

ever

ap

Topinard peared his stupe adds (pp. 321, 370) that, conclusions of faction," he has reached

M.

himself

THE PKOBLEM
his

67

own which seem,

to

readers

who

do not take these opinions too seriously, exceedingly like an admission that

he finds himself an

example of the
:

second law of thermodynamics Yes there is contradiction between

"

the animal man,

as

he was in a

state of

nature, and as he has maintained himself

to our day,

and the
be.

social
!

man such

as

he ought to

Yes

the objective

realities of science are in contradiction

with the subjective aspirations of man. Yes nature laughs at our conceptions.
!

Society has been born of man, and has

been built

on

sand,

often

with only
individ

materials of convention.
ual for

The
is
it,

whom
enemy
;

it

is

created

worst

he

admits

always its but will

not bend to

its

necessities."

Although M. Topinard adhered blind

ly to the second law of

thermodynamics

68

LETTER TO TEACHEES
regard to the approaching

in

end of

the world, and was logically obliged to accept its conclusion that all useful

work

or progress, social or mechanical,

depended on inequalities of intensity, endowed with energy still left to dis sipate, the moment he realizes that
such inequalities
therefore
still
is

exist,
still

and that
he

progress

possible,

bewails the fact as an inexplicable and

unfortunate mystery.
poses
rule

Such cross-pur

have become almost a standard

in
sociology.

They have always

commenta

been the rule in history. In the earlier scientific

ries

on the

Law

of Dissipation, astron

omers

and
little

physicists

commonly took
assurances that
so

some

pains to soften the harsh

ness of their

doom by
not

the

prospect was

black

as

it

seemed, but that the sun would adapt

THE PROBLEM
itself to

69

some
to

convenience by allowing thousands or millions of years

s

man

elapse

before

its

extinction.

This

pleasing

thoughtfulness

has

vanished.

Geologists,

when most
more
than

generous, scarce
thirty

ly

allow

thousand
its

years since the last ice-cap began

partial recession; while, quite

they

insist

that

their

commonly, most careful

justify

and elaborate estimates do not

them
of

in granting

more than a quarter

the very incomplete

that

time

to

process

of clearing

away the
of

ice

and

snow

from

the

streets

primitive
cataclys

New York

and Boston.

The
all

mic ruin that spread over

the most

populous parts of the northern hemi sphere while the accomplished and highly educated architects of Nippur

were laying the arched foundations of their city, has, it is true, been partially

70

LETTER TO TEACHERS

covered or disguised under new vege tation but even this brief retrospec is tive darkened by the reprieve
;

earnest assurances of the most popular

text-books and teachers that they can

hold out
that

no

good reason for hoping

the
is

sun

exemption will last. ready to condense again

The
at

any
dis

moment, causing another violent

great outburst and waste of
heat.
its

equilibrium, to be followed by another

expiring

The humor dom strikes a

in America,

of these prophecies sel

reader with
in

its

full force

but

Europe the love

and
self-

of dramatic effect inspires every line.

Compared with the

superficial

complacent optimism which seems to veneer the surface of society, the fre

quent and tragic outbursts of physicists,

astronomers,
geologists,
biologists,

and

THE PROBLEM
sociological
socialists

71

announcing
surpass
all

the
that

end

of

the

world,

could be

conceived

as

duct of the time.

The
a

a natural pro note of warning

;

verges on the grotesque

cally

it

is

hysteri
it

solemn

little

more, and
a

would sound

like that of

Salvation

army

a small
it

natural

shock

might

easily turn

to a panic.

Naturally a
in

historian

is

most

interested

what
the

concerns primitive history, and

relations

all

of primitive

man

to nature.

He
"

takes

up the

last

work on the sub

be

ject,

happens, in 1910, to Les Premieres Civilisations," by

which

M.

J. de

Morgan, published in June, 1909.

is

M. de Morgan
authorities

one of the highest

possibly quite the highest

authority

on

his

subject,

and

this

volume

contains

the

whole

result

of

his vast study.

Unconscious of ther-

72

LETTEK TO TEACHERS
treats

modynamics, he
as

primitive
of

man

a sort

of

function

the glacial

epoch, and ends by telling his readers

(p.
"

97):-

The
;

glacial period

is

far

from being
still

ended

our

times,

which

make

an integral part of it, are characterised by an important retreat of the glaciers,

started

long before the beginnings of It is to be history. supposed that

is

this retreat of the ice

not definitive,

but that the cold will return, and with

it

the depopulation of

a part of our
to fore

globe.
tell

Nothing can enable us

or the
lot

the amplitude of this future oscil

lation,

which the laws of

humanity.
will

nature destine
this

to

During

occur cataclysm which the most fecund imagination can not conceive, disasters the more horri
revolutions
ble because, while the population of the

THE PROBLEM

73

earth goes on increasing every day, and

even the
little

less

favored districts
inhabited,

little

by

become
groups,

the

different

human

crowded

back one on

another, and finding no

more space

for

existence, will be driven to internecine

destruction."

M. de Morgan belongs
mille

to

the most

serious class of historians, while

M. Ca-

Flammarion,
of
the

the

distinguished
observatory,
is

director

Meudon

besides
also

being a serious

astronomer,

one of the most widely read, and

intelligent,

most highly
science.

vulgarisers

of

When

he reaches the point

catastrophe
in

of describing the solar

his

popular

astronomy,
field

an enormous
rors.
("

for

he lays bare harrowing hor

Astronomic Populaire," 102, 103, Paris, 1905) Life and human activity will insen:
"

74

LETTEE TO TEACHEKS
be shut up within
Saint Petersburg,
Paris,
will

sibly
zones.

the tropical
Berlin,

Lon

don,

Vienna,

Constantinople,
to

Rome,

successively sink

sleep

under their eternal cerements.

During

many
will

centuries,

equatorial

humanity

undertake vain arctic expeditions to rediscover under the ice the sites of
Paris,

of

Bordeaux,

Marseilles.

The

Lyons, of sea-shores will have

of

changed and the map of the earth will be transformed. No longer will man no longer will he breathe, live,
except in the equatorial zone, the day when the last tribe,
expiring
in

down

to

already
shall

cold

and

hunger,

camp on
the

the shores of the

last sea in

rays

of

pale

sun

which
earth

will

henceforward
is

illumine

an

that

only

wandering
light

tomb,

turning

around a useless

and a barren

THE PROBLEM
heat.

75

Surprised by the cold, the last human family has been touched by
finger

the

of

death,

and

soon

their

bones will be buried under the shroud

of eternal
ice.

The

historian of nature
to write
:

would then be able

lies

Here

the

entire

which

has

humanity of a world Here lie all the lived

!

dreams of ambition,
of military
affairs

all all

glory,

the conquests the resounding

of finance,

all

the

systems
also
all
lie

of

an imperfect
oaths

science,

and
!

the
all

of

mortals

love
!

Here

the beauties of earth

But no mor

tuary stone will mark the spot where the poor planet shall have rendered its
last
sigh!"

As though
M.

to assure the public that

is

he knows what he

talking
is

about,

Flammarion,
goes

who
on

practical

astronomer,

with

certain

76

LETTER TO TEACHERS
exaltation,
to

sombre
prophet,

like

religious
terrors

say

that

the

he

predicts are of

common

occurrence in

astronomy, and leaves his scholars to infer that nature regards her end as
attained

only

when she has

treated
:

man
"

an enemy to be crushed Already we have seen twenty-five

as

stars

sparkle

in

the

with a spasmodic light fall back in heavens, and

!

extinction neighboring death

Already

some of the

brilliant

stars

hailed

by

our fathers have disappeared from the

charts of the sky, and a great

number

of

red

stars

have entered into their

"

period of extinction

Volumes would be needed

if

a writer

should attempt to follow the track of this idea through all the branches of
present thought
;

but, without unneces

sarily disturbing the labors

of anthro-

THE PKOBLEM

77

pology and biology, the merest insect might be excused for asking what

happens
himself,

to

fellow

insects,

who,

like

are

enjoying
of
these

the

precarious
solar

hospitality

numerous
with

systems.

M. de Morgan and M. Flamare

marion

contented

freezing

them

but

M.

Lapparent

takes

the

view that they will do better to become disembodied spirits which is

loftier
;

even

less

likely

to

suit

either

the

American professor or the American student, whose ideas of education are

exceptionally
practical.

The
matter,"

"soul,

freed from the bonds of

to require

seems

no education unless in the

of

passive

consciousness
logic,

matics and

which

pure mathe has hitherto

been the weakest side of the American

student,

who

is

averse

even

to

the

ingenuous simplicity of logarithms and

78
vectors.

LETTER TO TEACHEKS

More than

this,

the law of

inexorably implies that, the whole series of phases throughout which may intervene in the future as
in the past, in the
dissipation

degradation

of the

higher intensities, a sympathetic exhaus tion must be expected in all the ener
gies

dependent on the central system,

as

among which,
and
vital

the

palaeontologists

physicists

have
are

assured

us,

the

energies

not only the most

dependent,

but

also,

and

particularly

the most sensitive.

Physical or mental,

they should, according to theory, suffer an accelerated decline, and yet their
actual position should also

show a

cer

tain lag behind the rate of the central

energy.

They

are really worse off than

The soothing vision of they seem. thousands or millions of years, for the
ultimate
extinction

of

solar

energy

THE PKOBLEM
protects

79
to

highly inadequate degree from their own ex All energies tinction in the process.

the Universities

which are convertible into heat must

suffer degradation
;

among

these, as the

physicists expressly insist, are all vital

processes

the mere temporary approach

to a final

equilibrium would be fatal

all

and,

among

the infinite possibilities

of evolution, the only absolute certainty

in physics
is
it.

that the earth every day

approaches
the

No

one can be trusted

opinion about
special
vital

to express so

much as an moment when any

;

process

may expect to be reduced in energy man and beast can, at the best,
look

forward

only

to

diversified

agony of twenty million years; but at no instant of this considerable period

can the professor of mathematics flatter either himself or his students with an

80

LETTEE TO TEACHERS

exclusive or extended hope of escaping

imbecility.

According to some view is extravagantly

lously
tific

geologists,

this

almost ridicu
scien

optimistic; but with the

correctness
is

of these opinions,

the
asks
col

historian

not

concerned.

He

only

how

far the teaching

of his

leagues contradicts his own,

far society sides

and how

with his contradictors.

difficult
is

His

question
first

is

to

answer.
of no
air

At

sight

he

conscious

divergence.

Society

has

the

of

taking for granted its indefinite pro with more gress towards perfection
confidence,

and sometimes with

than
in

more

dogmatism

1830,

when

Macaulay made it a literary law by his famous polemic against Southey.

Yet the same

society

has
its

acquired a

growing habit of feeling

own

pulse,

THE PROBLEM
and registering its from day to day
itself

81

own temperature,
of prescribing
to
;

new regimes from year to year and of doubting its own health like
a nervous invalid.

Granting that the

intended
is,

effect

of intellectual education

as

Bacon,

Descartes

and

Kant

began by
it

insisting,

a habit of doubt,

a
a

only in a very secondary sense habit of timidity or despair. To

is

certain

point,

the
;

more

education,

the more hesitation

but beyond that point, confidence should begin. Keep

still

ing Europe

in view for illustration

for

and

assuming

the
exist,

moment
every

that

America does not

of the French or
that

reader

German papers knows

not

ducing
supposed

day passes without pro some uneasy discussion of

social

decrepitude

fall

decline ing off of the birth-rate; of rural of population ; lowering

82

LETTER TO TEACHEKS
standards,
increase

army
suicides,

multiplication

of
or
;

of

insanity

idiocy,

of cancer,

of tuberculosis

signs of
feebled

nervous
vitality,

exhaustion,
"

of en
of
alco

habits

"

holism and drugs,

in

failure of eye-sight

the

young,
coupled

and
with

so

on,

without
for

end,

suggestions

correcting these evils

such as remind

a historian of the Lex Poppaea and the Roman Empire rather than they
prove that careless confidence in
itself

which ought
of social

stamp the rapid rise energy which everyone asserts

to

and admits.
the the

great newspaper opens

discussion

of a
"

axiom that

reform by there are unmistak

social

able signs of deterioration in the race/

The County Council

lishes

of

London pub
of
elaborate

yearly

volume

statistics,

only to prove,

according to

THE PROBLEM
the

83

London Times,
today,"

that

"the

great
is

city of

of which Berlin
"

the

most significant type,

stantly

exhibits a con

diminishing vitality;" and, in almost the same breath, other journals exult in showing that the globe is
rapidly becoming a suburb of the great
cities.

Rarely does the press dwell on

of
social

proofs

evolution
in

except
of

as

shown

negatively

decline

the

death-rate, or of illiteracy, or in relief

from pain, and never does the

tician to

statis

or

sociologist help the historian

any

clear

understanding
his

of

the
goal.

progress expected as

literary
is

The medical
mists
to

profession

singularly
pessi

shy of pledges.
a

The

poets are
to

man

and

woman.
time,

The
in

legislators

pass

half

their

Germany,
social

France

and

England,
a

framing

legislation, of which

84

LETTEK TO TEACHERS

large part rests on the right and duty

of society to protect itself against

itself,

not under the fiction of elevating itself from lower to higher, but as in the
case of alcohol
itself

and drugs,

to protect

from deterioration by the exercise

analogous to the

of powers

power of

war.

As

yet the

press

is

alarmist with

decency, even in Paris and Berlin, but

at the rate of progress since 1870, the

press

might soon learn

of

to blacken the

prospects

humanity
genius
little

with
Camille

all

the

picturesque

of

Flam-

marion.

A
is is

more
needs
;

superficial

knowledge
disposition

all

it

the general

already excellent.

Mean

while, the teacher of history has fallen

out of sight.

The freedom

that was

liberally extended to others

was denied
s law,

to him.

Supposing Kelvin

with

THE PKOBLEM
Lapparent
rion s
true,
s

85

conclusions,
to

and Flammabe
rigorously

illustrations,

and that

its

truth was admitted

in biology as in physics, the

American

professor

who should

begin his annual

course
their

by announcing to his class that year s work would be devoted to

"

showing in American history

versal

a uni

tendency to
"

the

dissipation

of

energy

which

and degradation of thought, would soon end in making

"improper

America
of

for

the habitation
constituted,"

man

as

he

is

now

might not fear the fate

of

Giordano

Bruno, but would certainly expect that of Galileo, even though he knew that
every member of the Cardinal s College of professors held the same opinion.

The University would have

itself

to

protect

by dismissing him.
truth or the error of the three

The

86

LETTER TO TEACHERS
of Evolution

Laws
in

does not properly

concern the teacher.

these
days,

No

physicist can,
to

be
s

expected
atoms,
or
s

take

oath that Dalton

Willard
kinetic
for

Gibbs
gases,

phases,

or

Bernoulli

are

true.

He
or
their

uses

his

scholars

the
best

figure
suits

the

formula

which

convenience.
is

The

historian

or

sociologist

alone

restricted in the use of formulas

which

shock the moral sense

yet the stop

page

of

discussion

in

the

historical

lecture-room

cannot

affect

the

teach
in

ing of the
physical
legislation

same

young men
still

the
the the

laboratory,

less

of
;

their
it

parents

at

State capital

would merely ruin the

school

of history.
is

However much
result,
itself

to

be

regretted

such a

society

cannot safely permit

to

be con

demned

to a lingering

death,

which

is

THE PROBLEM

87

sure to tend towards suicide, merely to

suit the convenience of school-teachers.

The dilemma
serious
;

is

real

it
it

may become
needs to be

in

any case

understood.

The

battle

of Evolution
;

has never

been wholly won

the chances at this

it

moment
be

favor the fear that

lost.

may

yet

wholly

The

Darwinist
;

no

longer talks of Evolution

he uses the

word Transformation. The historian of human society has hitherto, as a habit,

preferred to
tacit

write

or

to

lecture

on a

assumption that humanity showed upward progress, even when it empha

tically

showed
;

the

contrary,

as

was
atti

not

uncommon
cannot

tude

but this passive be held against

the

physicist

who

takes
his

the

invades his territory and teaching of history out of

hands.

Somewhere he

will

have

88
to

LETTER TO TEACHEKS

make

a
so

stand,

but

he has been

already

much

surrender of his

by the defences that he knows

weakened

no longer where a stand can be made. As a form of Vital Energy he is con

victed of being a Vertebrate, a

Mammal,

Monodelphe,

Primate, and must

eternally,

by

his

body, be subject to
of

the

second
there

law
is

thermodynamics.

Science Escape impossible. has shut and barred every known exit.

Man

can

detect

no

outlet

except

through the loophole called Mind, and even to avail himself of this, he must
follow Lapparent
s

advice,

become a

disembodied
erate

spirit

and seek a confed

physicists

among such
as as
;

ologists

are willing

physi to admit that

or

man,
ance
as

an

animal,

has

no

import
that

that his evolution or degradation

an

organism

is

immaterial

THE PEOBLEM
his

89

physical

force

or

condition

has

nothing to do with the subject; that the old ascetics were correct in sup and that his con pressing the body
;

proof of his right to regard Reason as the highest poten

sciousness
is sufficient

tial

of Vital Energy.
historian,

The
oldest

thrown back on

this

of

battlegrounds,

may

console

himself
physicists

with

the

thought
as

that
are
;

the
as

and

physiologists

much
on,

embarrassed

himself

but

while, in former
after

ages, the

world went
to

a
its

fashion,

trusting

the

energy of

archaic instincts to
its

make

good the lapses of

reasoning powers, the external pressure of physical forces,

under their thermodynamic laws, seems of late to have literally driven physical
science into an assumption of universal
authority, so that physiologists can

no

90

LETTER TO TEACHERS
the
logical

longer evade

necessity

of

framing a stem-history for the mind,

as for the

body or the skeleton

and

since their law tends

strongly towards

monism,

unity of energy, they can not supply man with any other energies or laws than he inherited from his
only

known

or

unknown
Reason
of

ancestor,

the hypothetical eocene lemur.

In the
can

system of Energetik, only another phase

earlier

be

the

energy
;

known
of the

as Instinct or Intuition

and

if this

be admitted as the stem-

history

Mind
it

as

far

back as

the eocene lemur,

must be admitted

for all forms of Vital

Energy back

to

the vegetables and perhaps even to the

crystals.

In the absence of any definite

series, all

break in the
as

must be treated
equivalent

endowed

with

energy

to will.

THE PEOBLEM

91

The
phy
;

idea

is

very familiar in philoso

consists

the

strangeness
in

in

its

gaining

foothold

science.

At

the

Congress of the Italian Society for the Progress of Sciences held at Parma in
1907,

Ciamician,

the

distinguished

Professor of the University of Bologna,

suggested that the potential of Vital Energy should be taken as the Will.

The

step
it

seems

logical,

and

to

the

historian
as old
to

seems natural.
;

as Aristotle
its

The idea is anyone who cares

will
"

study

history

find

it

in

Eduard von Hartmann

des

Unbewussten

"

(Vol.
;

Philosophic n, pp. 426-

439, Leipzig, 1904)

uses of today, the

but, for the actual

story goes back

s

no

further than to Schopenhauer

famous

work,

"Die

Welt

als

Wille,"

which

appeared in 1819-1844. Schopenhauer held that all energy in nature, latent

92

LETTER TO TEACHERS
is

or active,

identical

with Will.

Be

fore his time,

he claimed,

the concept

of Will was included in the

concept

of Force; he reversed the order on the

ground that the unknown should be referred to the known, and that there
fore

the
or

whole

universe

of

energy,

known
sity or

unknown, of whatever inten

volume, should be brought into

the category of intuition.

phers, even

The

philoso

when

rejecting the identity

of Will with Energy, were before long

busily coquetting with the idea, which
offered extraordinary
tors

charms
the

to

inven

of

systems.
s

For

historian,

Schopenhauer
merit
of

method had the double

merging
the

logically

two

great historical schools of thought.

The

old

idea

of

philosophy

Form, which ruled the of Aristotle and Thomas

Aquinas, slipped readily over the idea

THE PROBLEM
of

93

taught by Kelvin and Clausius, so that henceforward it mat schools, in tered little whether the

Energy,

their rage for nomenclature, called the

result
"

"Will,"

or

"

Entelechy,"

or

Dominant,"

or
or

"Organic
"

Principle,"

or

"Trieb,"

Strebung,"

or

"In

tuition,"
"

or

"Instinct,"

Force
"

"

as of old

simply even the forbidden

"

or just

words

Creative power
;

became almost
logic

orthodox science
of
"Will"

in

any case the

or

"Energetik"

impera

tively

required

that

every conception

whatever, involving a potential, obliged

ontologists to regard the

will-power of

every stem as the source of variation

in

the branches,

and

to

admit,

as

physical necessity, that the branch which has lost the power of variation

should be regarded as an example of enfeebled energy falling under the

second law of thermodynamics.

94

LETTER TO TEACHERS

Such an arrangement, however con venient for degradationists, and however

tempting
to

students
is

of palaeontology

in particular,

likely to bring trouble

on other branches of education.

cially

Espe
the
to

for

human

history

its

bearings

are

painfully

pointed.

Already

anthropologists have admitted

man
hope

be

specialised

beyond
treated
as

the

of

further variation, so that, as an energy,

he

must
an

be

weakened
a de

Will,

enfeebled

vitality,

graded potential.

He

cannot himself
Will-power,
social,

deny that his highest whether individual or

have
proved
itself

must

by

his

highest

variation,

which

was

incontrovertibly

his act of transforming himself from a

whatever hypothetical eocene lemur, into such a creature may have been,
a

man

speaking an elaborately inflected

THE PROBLEM
language.

95

This

staggering

but

self-

evident certainty requires

many

phases

of weakening Will-power to intervene

in the

process

of subsidence

into

the

reflective,

hesitating,

relatively
;

passive
in

stage

called

Reason

so

that

the

end, if the biologists insist on imposing

their law on the anthropologists, while
at the

same time refusing

series,

to

admit a
will

break in the

the

historian
as

have

to

define

his

profession

the

science

of

human

degradation.

The

law of thermodynamics must embrace

human
its

history in

its

last as well as in

earliest phase.

If the physicist can

suggest any plausible

this

way

of escaping
logically

demonstration,

either

or

by mathematics, he
benefit

will confer a great

on history
the

but,

pending

his
is

decision, if

highest Will-power
first,

conceded to have existed

and

if

96

LETTER TO TEACHEES
is

the physicist
tulate

to

be granted his pos

that

height

and
fall

intensity

are

equivalent terms, while

and

diffusion

are equivalent to degradation, then the

intenser energy of Will
itself in

which showed

the primitive extravagance of

for

variation

which Darwin

tried

so

painfully to account

by uniformitarian and must formulas, must have been

be

now

in

the

constant

process

of

degraded and lost, and can The process, in never be recovered.

being
physics,
is

not reversible.
historian

If the
is

of

human

society

to

let

himself
the
fact

be

position,

placed should be
in

in

this

under

stood

and
case,

accepted

advance.

In

that

be

easily

two schools of history can organised; but the effect

branches
of
instruction
s
is

on

other

not so simple.

Ciamician

suggestion,

THE PKOBLEM
like

97

Schopenhauer s, like Nietzsche s, like Eduard von Hartmann s philoso

phy,
history
does,

no doubt, threaten
fantastic

human
but
that of

with
its

revolution,
is

perhaps

strangest result

converting metaphysics into a branch of physics. Nothing in the history of

philosophy is more distinctly marked than the effort of physics and meta physics, since 1890, to approach each
other.

Only

specialist

knows even
this subject,

the

titles

of the books on

in the

German language

alone

but a

beginner might perhaps try to get an idea of the from Wilhelin process

Wundt s
naturalist

well-known
(Leipzig,

"

System
1897).

der

Philosophic,"

The
but

now

readily admits that plants

or

have

souls

will-power,
soul as an

he

appropriates

the

energy of
sight,

thermodynamics.
7

At

first

the

98

LETTER TO TEACHEKS

tendency seems towards metaphysics, but the true current is the reverse.

The chaos
but
the

is

more chaotic than

to

ever,

effort

make
is

the

laws

of

Energetik

cover

all,

perhaps

the

only very vigorous intellectual activity

now

in evidence.
parties
to

Both
appealed

have

in

consequence
and,

the

Psychologists,
in

under the lead of Ostwald

Germany

and

of

Loeb

in America, have created,

within the last few years, a new litera

ture so extensive as to defy all students

Indeed, except advanced specialists. almost as in mathematics, the specialist

himself

is

rarely

Every country
laws.

equal to his task. in the world is con

tributing to the pursuit of psychological

In
the
"

Russia,

Krainsky

volume
of
"

on

Law

of

Conservation

Energy applied

to Psychical Activity

THE PROBLEM

99

appeared as long ago as the year 1897.

The amount

of intelligence and patient

is

research put into the investigation

great as though wealth were
its

as
;

end

and, though the drift of evidence

may
and
to

seem

to

historian
has,
as

both
yet,

clear

strong,

he
the

no

right

hamper
these

inquiry by inflicting
clever

on

exceedingly

and

earnest

seekers any inquiries of his own.

At

most, in his desperate search for allies

to

protect

him from

the

tyranny of

thermodynamics, he might timidly ask, not them but himself, whether the new
psychology tends towards the possibility that Reason may be a more or less

remote consequence of Tropism, that is to say, a form of motion excited by

exterior forces.

In

itself,

this old
"

and

nous vivons very familiar theory, that is as parceque nous sommes excites/

100

LETTER TO TEACHERS
as

indifferent to sociologists

any other

physico-chemical or mechanical analogy used for purposes of technical instruc

tion
;

but

if

it

goes

to

the

point of
that

asserting,

as

an

acquired
is

truth,

the motion of the mind

an induced
laws
of
in

motion

which
the

follows

the
of
find

electricity,
its

historian
will

mind

social

variety

himself

seriously embarrassed.

Without going
of this
inquirer

back

to

the earlier discussion

question,

burning
in

an

may
of
:

allow himself to quote the latest form

which

the

distinguished
it.

chief

the school states

"

Ostwald says Between psychological and mechan

operations,

ical

there

seems

to

be
the

nearly

the

same

difference

and

same resemblance, as between and chemical operations."

gie."

electric

("

L EnerOn
this

Paris, 1910, p.

210).

THE PROBLEM
question,
ity

101

Loeb

is

even a higher author

latest

than Ostwald, and his

are
still

expres

sions

more
he says,

emphatic.
:

He
"

recognises no such thing as Will

It

seems to
the
favor

me,"

"that

it

is

in
to

interest

of

psychology

itself

development of the theory and not of tropisms of tropisms

the
"

alone
cal

"

My
to

object

is

to refer psychi to

phenomena not only

also
("

tropisms

but

physico-chemical

pheno

mena."

15,

La Kevue des Idees," October With the utmost ingenuity 1909).

that, at least
is

and labor he has proved

in
for

many low
Will
s is

organisms, what

taken

really mechanical attraction.

demonstrations are quite beau tiful pieces of work which rouse high

Loeb

admiration for his powers bearing on his colleagues

If

but their
is

obscure.

Thought

is

capable of being classed

102

LETTER TO TEACHERS

with Electricity, or Will with chemical affinity, as a mode of motion, it seems

necessarily
to
fall

at

once under

the

second law of thermodynamics as one of the energies which most easily degrades itself, and, if not carefully guarded,
returns

bodily to the cheaper form called Heat. Of all possible theories,

is

this

likely to

prove the most

fatal

to Professors of History.

The dilemma is pointed out by Dr. Hanna Thomson, in his book on the
Brain, with the emphasis that suits
tension
"

its

Physically the gap between the brain of man and the brain of an
:

anthropoid ape is too insignificant to but their difference as beings count

;

corresponds to the distance of the earth from the nearest fixed star. The brain
of

man does What does?"

not

account for

man

THE PKOBLEM

103
is

The
bluntly
to

question, thus bluntly posed,

answered
physicist

in
law.

sense

hostile
is

the

The
"

brain

developed by the Will, which lies within and behind the brain By practice
: . .

the Will-stimulus will not only

organise brain-centres to perform

functions, but will project
ing,
or, as

new

new connect
will

they are technically called,

fibres,

association

which

make

nerve-centres

they could not, without being thus associated/

together

work

as

The motive-power
"because

is

not of the brain,

masterful personal Will which makes the brain human

it

is

the

"

by developing one of the brain-hemi and this Something known spheres as Will continues Dr. Hanna Thomson,
"

"

"

is

not natural, but supernatural, both

in

its

powers and in

its

creations."

Of

course the supernatural character

104

LETTER TO TEACHEKS
is

of the will

the whole point in dispute,

and the usual doctrine of the modern

psychologist substitutes the word Nature
for the

word Supernatural.

Thus Paul

Flechsig, concluding his address to the

Psychological Congress in
says that
"

Rome

(1905),

changes brain, has Nature succeeded in attaining this truly lofty end. Thus the Will

in

only by constant, progressive the physical form of the

shows organic evolution from first to last, and shows in this respect no differ
ence from other bodily functions. It is a product of organic nature, and, at
least

in

its

broadest sense, bears that

stamp."

The

three views seem far apart, and

yet one can conceive that Kelvin,

who

troubled himself only with the practical

means of obtaining a fall of potential equivalent to the work done, might have

THE PKOBLEM

105

seen no necessary contradiction to his

law in either case

"

Quite so
"

"

he might be supposed

to reply

the force that

Thomson

calls

supernatural Will,

and Flechsig calls an organic function, and Loeb calls a

is

physico-chemical relation,

the force

which

call

vital

Energy, and which

in regarding

I agree with Dr.

Thomson
it

as supernatural in the sense that nature

no longer produces

here,

more than

she produces any other element or atom.

Physicists are at perfect liberty to regard

the

Will

as

another

name

for

the

same primitive, elementary, unexplained energy which gave odor to a molecule

of copper, or
into

made
with

the magnolia burst

flower

more

than

animal

sensuality and perfection of form, color,

scent,

and

line

or the caterpillar sud

denly soar into the air with the amazing,

106

LETTER TO TEACHEKS

inconceivable sensual properties of the

butterfly
you. talk
;

but the mere brain-mechanism

about
is,

in physics, far less

extraordinary, as Will, than what went

before
it,

creations

always

growing

higher in tension as you go backward, like the eye, or the innumerable varie
ties

or

transformations of
vital

the shapes

energy has taken in every province of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, while all are still subordinate

which

and even

trivial

when compared with

itself,

the primary

creation of energy

about which
except
its

no one knows anything

Nature.
in
to
7

name,

Such reasoning
historian
little

circles

helps the

make

headway

against the current of physical energies.

His dilemma remains untouched.

physicist

The
is

says

that

Thought
has

an

organic growth which

the faculty

THE PEOBLEM
of determining
certain
limits,
its

107

own

action within
"

but whose

Freedom

"

exists only in the

atmosphere of
of
to

ideals.

By

the

majority

physiologists,

Thought
present

seems
as

be

regarded
less

at

Act,

degraded an enfeebled function of Will

:

more or

"Thought
helplessness,"

comes
says

as

the

result
in

of
his

Lalande
"

volume on
p.

"

Dissolution

(Paris, 1899,

Thought, as Bain says, is the refraining from speech or action.

"

166)

The
comes

truth
first
;

is,

therefore,

that

action

the

idea

is

an act which

tends to accomplish

itself,

and which,
form of

when stopped by some

its

obstacle before

realisation,

finds

new

reality in that stoppage.

Jean Jacques

Rousseau said
is

The man who thinks

;

and in this he a depraved animal expressed an exact view of psychology.

108

LETTER TO TEACHERS
far as

As

he
;

is

animal, the thinker

;

is

a bad animal
;

eating badly

digesting

badly In him the degradation of vital energy is (La depravation de la flagrant.

nature physique
est

often

dying without posterity.

visible chez

lui)."

The
"L

late

volume

of

M.
is

Bergson,
the

Evolution

Creatrice,"

most

widely
efforts

known among
of

the very latest

to

metaphysicians

defend

their

conceptions against the methods

;

on this point of Reason and Instinct, M. Bergson seems

of physics
yet,

and

ready to go further than M. Lalande. The whole chapter on Instinct ought

to be read,

and studied in connection

with the treatment of the same subject

by Reinke, in his Einleitung (Kap. 21), and the source of it all in Eduard
von Hartmann
few
"

"

"

Unbewusste,"

but a
express

paragraphs will serve

to

THE PROBLEM
the
present views of

109

the

College

de
of

France

about
life

the

relative
:

value

phases of
"

as forces

From

our point of view,

life

appears

globally
starts

as

an

immense
to

wave which
itself

from a centre

propagate
is

outwards,

and

which

arrested

at

almost every point of

its

circumference,

and

is

converted into oscillation without

;

advance

at

one

point

alone,

it

has

forced the obstacle, and the impulse has passed on freely. This liberty is regis tered in the form of man. Everywhere

except with man, consciousness has been brought to a stop with man alone it
;

has pursued
it is
it

its

road.

...

In doing

so,

has abandoned not merely true, the baggage that embarrassed it, but has been obliged to renounce also some
precious
properties.
chiefly

Consciousness,
It

in

man,

is

intelligence.

might

110

LETTEK TO TEACHERS
been,
to
it

have
ought

seems

as

though
.
.

it
.

have been,

intuition too.

Another evolution might have led to a humanity either still more intelligent,
or

more

intuitive.

In

reality,

in

the

humanity of which we make

ition
is

part, intu

almost completely sacrificed to

. , .

intelligence.

Intuition

is still

there,

but vague, and especially discontinuous.

It is a

lamp, almost extinguished, which

hasard, but only

gains strength at long intervals, where

a vital interest
is

at

for a few instants.

On

our personality,

on the place we occupy in nature as a whole, on our origin, and

on our

liberty,

perhaps also on our destiny it casts a feeble and flickering light, but a light

which

pierces,

none the

less,

the dark

ness of the night in which our intelli

gence leaves us
If this
is

"

(pp. 288-289).

the best

that

physiology

THE PROBLEM
and
metaphysics

111

can do to help the historian of man, the outlook is far

from
quired

cheerful.

The
to

historian
to

is

re

either

expressly

assert,

or
his

surreptitiously
students,

assume,

before
function

that

the

whole

of

nature has been

the ultimate

produc

tion of this one-sided Consciousness,

this

amputated Intelligence,
is

this de

graded Act,
the of

this truncated Will.

to

As
that

the function of the crystal

produce

order

of

its

cleavage, and

the rose,

the beauty of

its flower,

and that of the peacock, the splendors of its tail, and as, except for these
purposes,
neither
as
crystal,

rose

nor

peacock has
of

much human
to

interest

as a thistle or a maggot, so the func

tion

man

is,

the
;

historian,

the

but if all the production of Thought other sciences affirm that not Thought

112

LETTER TO TEACHERS
is

but Instinct

the potential of Vital

the beauties of

Energy, and

if

Thought

shown
genius,
traces

in

the
to

intuitions of artistic

are

be taken for the last

of an

instinct

now wholly dead

remains
for

or

dying,

nothing

the

historian

to describe or develop except

the history of a more or less mechani

cal

dissolution.

The

mere
seems
to

act

of

reproduction,

which

have

been the most absorbing and passionate purpose of primitive instinct, concerns
history
botanist

not
is

at

all,

except

as

the

concerned with the question

flower
is

whether
or

the

a the
to

developed
question

degraded leaf; whether the plant

but
exists

produce
leaf,
is

the flower, or to produce the

vital.

The

University, as distinct from

the technological school, has no proper function other than to teach that the

THE PROBLEM
flower

113

energy is Thought, and that not Instinct but Intellect is

the
highest
;

of

vital

power of a supernatural
self-

Will

an ultimate, independent,

producing, self-sustaining, incorruptible

solvent of all earlier or lower energies,

and incapable of degradation or

lution.

disso

Intellect should bear the

to

same relation
to

Instinct that

the

sun bears

gaseous nebula, and hitherto in

history
it

human
relation

has

asserted
its

this

without a doubt of

self-evident truth.

The

assertion

has

led

to

physical

violence

and
limit,

intellectual

extravagance
history

without

so

that

shows

man

as alternately insane with his

own

pride of intellect, and shuddering with horror at its bloody consequences but
;

the remains of primitive instinct taught society that it could not abandon its

114

LETTEE TO TEACHEKS

claim to be, or to represent, a super natural and independent energy, with out, by the same act, admitting and

demonstrating

its

progressive enfeeble-

ment of
truth
law.

will.

If Intellect led to such

it

an abdication,
of the

proved the universal second thermodynamic

Prom
and

the beginnings of philosophy religion, the thinker was taught

act of

by the mere
for

thinking, to take

granted

that

his

mind

was

the
still

highest energy of nature.

believes
it,

Society

and

asserts

its

supremacy,
a

on no other ground,
force

with
chief

sustained

which
and

is

the

theme
no
in

of
sign

history,

which
until

showed
attacked
its

of

relaxation

the

eighteenth century in

theological or

supernatural
still

outposts.

Society

must
as

continue to act

upon

it,

the

THE PROBLEM
Platonist, the Stoic
did,
for

115

and the Christian

reason
that
it

the
is

obvious
their

was

and

only

motive

for

existence,
identity.

their solitary title

to their

History
as

has

never

regarded
It

itself

a science of statistics.

was the
relation

Science

of
;

Vital

Energy
has

in

with time
centre
of

and of
its
life

late this

radiating
steadily

been

tending,

physical

together with every form of and mechanical energy,

towards mathematical expression. The torrent of physical energy has swept

society
school,

into

its

course,

until

every

and almost every teacher in the

except perhaps in the Church,

world,

takes an attitude of instinctive and

silent hostility to

any form of energy

that claims to be independent.

Even

though the triumph of

this

teaching

116
is

LETTER TO TEACHERS
the
ultimate
is

degradation

of

the

energy that
as

taught,

of the teacher

well

as

of

the

pupil

and

the

universe,
victory,

and the more complete his the more rapid his degradation,
is

the fault

not his that

the

radiating

centre of his world should betray this

visible decline of vigor.

can unwillingly Reason to be an energy at

Very

he
all
;

admit
at

the

utmost, he can hardly allow

it

to

be

more than a passive instrument of a

physico-chemical energy called Will
;

an

ingenious

economy
;

in

the

appli
;

cation of

power

a catalytic

medium
but

a dynamo, mysteriously converting one

form of energy into a lower

if

persuaded to concede the intrinsic force of Reason, he must still reject its inde
pendence. As a force, it must obey the as an energy it must laws of force
;

THE PROBLEM

117

content itself with such freedom as the

and in any case laws of energy allow it must submit to the final and funda
;

mental necessity of Degradation.

The

same

law,

by

still

stronger
itself.

reasoning, applies to the Will

CHAPTER

II

THE SOLUTIONS
The
general
reader,

though
thought,

apt to
is

mistake the drift of

rather a
specialist

still

judge of it than the can be, and he gets, from the

better

literature
its

of the twentieth
decade,
a

century in
impression

first

decided

that educational energy has passed into

the hands of the physico-chemists and

teachers

of

Energetik
old

or

thermody
the work
in

namics.
or

The
is

Law

of Conservation,

mechanics,

still

rules in

shop,

but
if

somewhat
not
in

lifeless

the
Its

scholars

the

schools.

teachers seem rather inactive, or

indifferent
;

even

yet possibly, here and there, 119

120

LETTER TO TEACHERS
uneasy at the actually coming to blows

one of them
prospect of

may

feel

with his

brother-professors

as

in

the

old days of religion. servation

The Law
;

of

Con
a

was an easy one reasonable share of freedom

universe
to
;

it

left

in

the

even astronomers were allowed

be devout,
;

and sometimes actually

while in strictness, physicists cease to be physicists unless they hold

that the law of Entropy includes

were so

Gods

and men

as well as universes.

Never

theless even a physicist

may

occasionally

bear in patience with perfectly impartial, not and, conservative, though yet

unsympathetic bystanders, who try to act as though the door were still open,

and who beg only

to

be told what the

to

new
itself

physicists

are

willing

do for

mankind.
is

What mankind
quite

will do for

another

matter,

since

THE SOLUTIONS
probably
daily
life,

121

all

teachers

admit

that,

in

society

may

go on indefinitely,
ill,

quite as well,
as in the past
;

or as

in the future

but as between schools

divergence
is

of

education

the

wide.

Possibly the Universities may think it safer to ignore the dilemma for another

decade or two, as they have ignored so many others but they would do better
;

to reach

they can, both parties could especially because, be brought into some slight sacrifice of
if

an understanding

if

principle,

and
the

so

abate

the rigor

of

their

law,

compromise might put

new

life

into the school of history, which

it.

badly needs

is

For purposes of teaching, the figure alone essential, and the figure of Rise
infinite

and Fall has done

the

harm from
That
far

beginnings

of

thought.
is

of

Expansion and Contraction

more

122

LETTER TO TEACHERS
even in history.
Evolution,

scientific,

again,

is

troublesome, and has already

yielded to the less compromising figure

of

Expansion and Transformation are words which commit

Transformation.
to

teachers

no

inconvenient

dogma

indeed, they are so happily adapted for

enough not to shock opinion, that they seem to impose themselves on the lecture-room. In
Galileos
strictness,

who

are wise

and

no doubt, water which dynamite which expands,

falls

are

equally degraded energies, but the

is

mind
of
is is

repelled
it

by the idea of degradation,

pleased

while

is

by the
an
in
;

figure

expansion.
diffused
like

Because
table-salt
less

energy
water,
it

not rendered
trary,
it

useful

on the con

only by that process be made useful at all to an animal like

can
life
is

man whose

shut within narrow

THE SOLUTIONS
limits

123

of

intensity
if

who

sends for a
rises
it

physician

his

temperature
dies if

single degree,

and who
;

rises

or falls 5

Centigrade

whose bath must

;

be tempered and his alcohol diluted and whose highest ambition is to train

and temper his own brute energies

obey law.
education
emollit

to

Notoriously civilisation and

enfeeble
:

mores

energy aim they especially at

personal
;

extending the forces of society

of
"

at

cost

the

intensity

of

individual

forces.

Thou shalt is law. The individual,

not,"

the beginning of
like

the

crystal

of

salt,

is

absorbed in the solution, but

the solution does

work which the

indi

vidual could not do.

Put

in this

form the law of thermo

less

dynamics seems
the change of the

obnoxious.
to

With
might

one word

another,

most

sensitive

evolutionist

124

LETTER TO TEACHERS

not refuse a hearing to the physicist

who should
as

affirm that organic as well

inorganic nature shows a universal

tendency to the dissipation of energy.

At

the utmost, the Evolutionist would

need only to point out that nature, contrary to her usually wasteful habits,
often

teaches

extreme

economy,
energies

as

when she
to

locks

up her
or,

in

atoms and molecules,

what

is

more
trains

man

purpose,
to

when she
habits
well

the

glow-worm
its

of

costless

industry that
veil

may
;

make
this

the sun
to

face

but,

consenting

pass

over,

for

the moment,

restriction

on

thermodynamic extravagance, the Darwinian will perhaps for the sake

of

harmony,

concede

that,

however
be in
is

economical the process

details, dissipation of

may

its

energy

always

occurring in the mass,

and that nature

THE SOLUTIONS
shows no known machinery ing the energy which she
If

125
for restor
dissipates.

the

physiologists

insist

on

this

concession, the

Darwinian may perhaps, by way of reaching an issue, content

himself with allowing
it,

with only a
concerns the

single, but serious, restriction.

This single restriction

limitations of science

itself,

which has

only the grosser operations of nature, and cannot deny and that further knowledge may
thus
far

penetrated

probably will
experience

overthrow

much

of the

This possibil ity is constantly discussed by the most eminent physicists, and is open to
of physics.
endless discussion
since
it
is

by physiologists but the last ground on which

;

the Darwinian
will

can
to

make

a stand, he
it,

do

well

reserve

on

the

chance that new

scientific horizons will

open to him.

126

LETTEK TO TEACHERS

Supposing, then, that the physicist takes the lead, and seeks for a means
of

compromise,
the

some

middle
can

term,

on which

elevationist

stand
!

while discussing the details of a treaty The degradationist can produce from
his
stores
for

of

figures

energy a number of choice such as that of

;

water,

which
to

expands
the

or

contracts,
falls

according

temperature, or
;

according to

its

position

or electricity,

which

dissipates itself in

work

or

of

dynamite which does work by explo sion or of gases which work restlessly
;

without
of

accomplishing

anything

or

table-salt,

which
to
;

dissolves

mysteri
or

ously

in

water,

stimulate

appetite

help but

digestion

possibly

he

may

begin with his favorite figure of

a gaseous nebula, and

may
as

offer to treat

primitive

humanity

volume

of

THE SOLUTIONS

127

human
tending

molecules of unequal intensities,

to

dissipate

energy,

and

to

correct the loss

by concentrating man
dense mass like the

kind into a
sun.

single,

History

would

then

become

record of successive phases of contrac

tion,

divided

tending

by periods of explosion, always towards an ultimate

equilibrium in the form of a volume of human molecules of equal intensity,

without coordination.
If this analogy, with
its

law of phases,

should be rejected, the physicist might

still

oifer a

number

of others, likening

social

energy to light, heat, electricity in short to any or radiating matter

;

form of physical energy, provided it obeyed his second law of thermody

namics,

by
;

dissipating

but, recovery will, the evolutionist will find himself

beyond with the utmost good

itself

128

LETTEE TO TEACHERS
to
is

much embarrassed
these offers.
tionist,

accept
to

any

of

If he

remain evolu

and he has no other motive

he
is

for existence,
as his

forced

to assert,

most modest claim, the concession

points
:

of two

1.

That organic

life

has the exclusive power of economising nature s waste. 2. That man alone
enjoys the supernatural power of con
sciously reversing

nature

process,

by
is

raising her dissipated energies, including

his own, to higher intensities.
to say,

That

man must
of

possess the exclusive

power

reversing

the

process

of

extinction

inherent in

other activities
conservation
of

of nature.

The mere

energy would not be enough for him, whatever it is for the glow-worm. The physicist cannot for a moment
be expected to
grant either
is

of

these
to

demands,

and

quite

likely

be

THE SOLUTIONS
irritated

129

by them even
organic
life

to

the point
privi
in
its

of flatly denying any

leges
to

exclusive

except

processes.

He

is

capable

of going on

to question the value

too, especially

of the processes

on the point of economy,

that

and

organisms are bad economists compared with inorganic He will readily admit that matter.
of
asserting

some of the lower forms

economists:
ple
;

of

life

are

the honey-bee, for

caterpillars

exam
stores

and some

which store

silk,

and the

coral polyp
;

which

but the vegetables lime, and so forth do much better, with their starch and
chlorophyl and carbon, while the ocean and the atmosphere do better still by
storing

heat

on

an
it

enormous

scale,

and distributing
it
;

where

man
and

needs

many
light
9

natural

minerals store heat

part

and

and

electricity,

130

LETTER TO TEACHEES

with them for

itself is

man

uses

the earth

of
to

supposed to be a store house and the sun is admitted energy

;

have stored
infinite

all

sorts

of energy in

almost

volume, for
use than

no

other

known,
poses
elastic
life

intelligent

the pur
stores

of

man.

Further,

steel

energy better than any vegetable can do it every molecule stores

;

-cohesive energy better than

life

any animal

does
still

it

while

all

intelligent people

are

staring, with stupid bewilder

ment, at the storage power of an atom Matter indeed, is energy of radium.

itself,

and
life

its

economies

first

made

organic

possible

by thus correcting
admit

nature

tendency to waste.
less

Even
that

can the

physicist

man

alone enjoys the supernatural

power of consciously reversing nature s processes, and of restoring her dissipated

THE SOLUTIONS
energies to their lost intensity.

131

From
as a

the physicist
conscious
force,

point of view,

Man,

and constant, single, natural seems to have no function except

the
evolutionist
is still

that of dissipating or degrading energy.

Indeed,

himself

has

complained, and
accents which

complaining in

grow shriller every day, that man does more to dissipate and
waste nature
rest of
s

economies than

all

the

animal or vegetable life has ever done to save them. one Already,"
"

hear the physicists aver man dissipates every year all the heat stored

may

"

in a thousand million tons of coal

which

nature herself cannot

now

replace,

and

he does this only in order to convert some ten or fifteen per cent, of it into
mechanical energy immediately wasted on his transient and commonly purpose
less objects.

He

draws great reservoirs

132

LETTER TO TEACHERS

of coal-oil and gas out of the earth,

which he consumes
is

like the coal.

He

digging

out even

the

peat-bogs in

order to consume them as heat.

He

has largely deforested the planet, and hastened its desiccation. He seizes all
the
zinc and whatever

other minerals

he can burn, or which he can convert into other forms of energy, and dissipate
into space.

His consumption of oxygen

would be proportionate to his waste of He startles and shocks even heat.

himself, in his rational moments,

extravagance,

as

in

his

by his armies and

avowedly
dissipate
it

armaments which are made

for

no other purpose than

the
destruction

to

or degrade energy, or annihilate

in

as

of

life,

on a

scale

that rivals operations of nature.

is still

What

more

curious, his chief pleasures,

so far

as they are his

own

invention,

THE SOLUTIONS
consist in gratifying the

133
unintelli

same

gent passion for dissipating or degrading

energy,
as

in

drinking
or

alcohol,

or

burning fireworks, or
illuminating
cities,

firing cannon, or

by
that

senseless
is

noises.

deafening them Worse than all,

of
destruction

such

his

instinct

he systematically exterminates or degrades all the larger forms of animal

life

in

which
efforts,

nature stored
while he

her

last

creative
ficially,

breeds arti
of
his

at

great expense
at cost of the

own

phosphorus and lime accumulated by nature s mostly

energies,

and

extinct organisms, the feebler forms of

animal
to

and vegetable energies needed

the prodigious waste of

make good
own.

his

Physicists

and physiologists

equally complain of these tendencies in

man, and a large part of their effort is now devoted to correcting them but
;

134

LETTER TO TEACHEES

the physicist adds that, compared with

this

enormous mass of nature

economies
in

which

man

dissipates

every year

rapid progression, the little he captures from the sun, directly or indirectly, as
heat-rays,

power,

is

water-power, or windtrifling, and the portion that

or
to higher intensities

he restores

would

be insignificant in any case, even if he did not instantly degrade and dissipate
it

again for some momentary Against this indictment

not
as

use."

of

man s
fond

wastefulness,

even

Darwin,

of

paradox

he

was,

would
defence,

have

cared to champion
since

man

and
of

Darwin

wrote,

the

waste
again

energy has
again.

been

doubled

and

On

this point, the

evolutionist

stands at great disadvantage.

Astron

omers are given to holding the sun to a sort of moral accountability because

THE SOLUTIONS
only about

135

it

utilises

2,227,000.000

its heat,

or gravitation, or electricity,

or whatever

energies

it

dissipates,

on

any known work,

resources
is,

and
space;

degrades
but,
if

the rest indefinitely in

their relative

are taken into

account, the sun

physicists,

according to the model economist com

pared with man.

The sun can keep

expenditure indefinitely, subject to occasional fits of economy while

;

up

its

man

is

bottomless
in

sink
cosmos,
of

of

waste

unparalleled

the

and

can

already

see

the end

the

immense
Nature
all

economies
stored
for

which
his

his

mother

support.

Almost

other organisms, especially the lowest,

were

good economists, and inorganic matter seemed to be perfect. No

physicist

dares

guess within

millions

136

LETTER TO TEACHEKS
date

of years the

when
of

the carbonif
;

erous
it

forests

stored their carbon

affair

but

was

an

today
steel
its

compared
stored
its

with

the

date
or the
its

when

elasticity,

magnet
yet the

attraction,

or
its

uranium

radiation,

or the earth

gravitation;

chemists seem

unconscious that any of the forms of matter actually known to them, unless
it

be the radiating
are

activities,

have

lost

or

now degrading

their

energies,

while the higher animals have passed, and are still passing, like dreams.

The
as well

evolutionist
as

knows

all this quite

the

degradationist,
s

and has

never held
virtue
as

man
he

extravagance for a
a sense
of his own,

except in

though
s

were

to

adopt
that

the

physicist

figure,
fall

and

say

the

enormous

of
all

potential
this

which he

obtained from

combustion was

THE SOLUTIONS
utilised

137

or

converted
in

by

him,

and
of

reappeared
a

the

intenser

form

energy called Thought.

Considered as

Thought was far more valuable than Heat or Electricity,

of

mode

motion,

and much more

subject
to

easily stored

it

was

the usual mechanical laws

of attraction

and

inertia

with
close
;

Electricity

was

analogy declared to be
;

its

and

its

usefulness was the

it

more
so

important carefully economised that

voir

because

had
its

been

full reser

could

be

drawn

upon,

as

in

Universities and schools and

libraries,

by
In

all

the world without limit, like

air.

the oxygen of the

literary
:

language,
in

God
lute

Energy
form
;

Thought was abstract and abso

Substance
;

the

ultimate

das Ding an
rested

sich.

Most philosophy
that

on

this

idea

Thought

is

138

LETTEE TO TEACHEES
highest
or
subtlest
is

the

energy

of

nature.

The
but

sun
does
its

an

immense
on
earth

energy,

work

only by expending 2,300,000,000 times more than equivalent energy in space, while Thought does more work without

expending
all.

any
s

equivalent

energy

at

By
the

placing a lens in the

rays,
it

path

of

sun

restores

to

given

intensity

the

radiation
diffused.
it

any which

had

been

indefinitely

By
raises

cheap mechanical instruments

or lowers the intensity of the
current.

electric

By
sets
;

slight

motions

of

the

hand
act
as

it

chemical energies at work

and,
it

without limit

what stamps the

divine,

impresses the result

with FOEM.

Thus the dispute

to the middle-ages.

drifts

back again

The

physicist can

no more

compromise with the evolu-

THE SOLUTIONS
tionist

139

than Lord Bacon could compro mise with the Schools. Galileo could
as

well

admit that

Joshua had held

up the

sun, as Kelvin could admit the

to reverse the dissipation

power of man

of solar energy, and thus to produce a

new energy of higher potential, called Thought yet even if, for the argu ment s sake, he had done so, the dispute
;

would

not

have

been

settled.

If
of

Thought were

actually

result

transforming other energies into one of a higher potential, it must still be equally
subject to the laws
energies,

which governed those

not

and could

be an

inde
or

pendent or supernatural
twist the

force.

Turn

dilemma
it

as they pleased,

they

returned to

in spite of themselves,
if

and

would do no better
were
to give

the evolutionist
offer

way, in his turn, and the concession he had refused.

140

LETTER TO TEACHERS
reflection,"

"On

he might

say,

"I

will grant that

thought
I

may

radiate

its
;

energy away, like

a figure which,
say, suits

electricity

and heat

understand you to your law of degradation while

free to prove, if I can, its

leaving

me

power
this

to rise in intensity.

Where

will

bring me out ? You admit that the sun maintains its energy
concession

indefinitely

by contracting

its

volume.

Are you

willing to

admit that Vital

Energy, regarded as a volume or society, might conceivably do the same thing ? and if so, what then ?
"

To

this,

the physicist must be sup

posed to reply,

however unwillingly, that nothing would suit him better than such a concession, which he had in
fact

begun by
it

offering,

but that, in

common
regard

honesty,
as

he

was

bound

to

a total

surrender of the

THE SOLUTIONS
evolutionist
claims.

141

The mind

either
it

was an independent energy, or If evolutionists conceded not.

outset
figure

was
the

at

that

it

was not, then the mere

;

the dispute mattered nothing ended of itself, and the law of thermo

dynamics went into operation.

the
to

If,

on

contrary,
insist

the

evolutionists

meant

on independence, they would

or

gain

little

nothing
life,

by proving a
animal,

power

to

prolong
physical,
;

vege

table, or

by aggregation or
they merely changed of the variable

by concentration
the

numerical

value

called

Time

"No

doubt,"

might a physicist be
"you

imagined

to

continue,

can,

if

you
this

like,

give to

this variable

called

Time

a value approaching infinity, and

is

your

ordinary
are

loop-hole
to
it,

of
as

escape.

You

welcome

142
far

LETTER TO TEACHERS
as

concerns us physicists,
get
it,

and we
in

will
it,

help you to

and stay

if

you

will only leave us

in peace

without annoying us by your unscien

tific,

ignorant

objections

which would

put a stop to science altogether, if you insist on them. Yet when we look

from your point of view, we cannot see what you gain by increasing the element of Time. You want to increase
at
it

not

Time but Tension.

You
it

do not
is,

want
if

to preserve society as

and
;

you did want it, you could not do it you want to raise the level of its Vital
Energy.

Now, we
is

admit

that

Vital
or that

Energy
it is

not

mere

attraction

cohesion or elasticity, but

limited
little

we say
laws,

by the same

and we

about any of them except their limitations. Of course, the mind

can reverse them in action, but so can

know

THE SOLUTIONS

143

they reverse each other, and the mind

too
;

as

cohesion reverses gravitation

and a drop of water reverses cohesion and one degree of heat reverses all.

watch-spring stores elasticity better than the mind stores thought. Any chance bit of obsidian or crystal can
forests
afire,

set

intelligent.

without calling itself fall of one degree in

temperature gives form to an icicle without claiming to be divine.

summer shower develops

of as

electricity at

a tension sufficient to reverse the energy

its way, without asserting the smallest pretension

many minds

as get

in

to reverse natural laws.

Nature
for

is full

of rival

energies

and,

anything

we know,
its infinite

may
;

once have been full of

but, hostile or friendly,

hostile energies

variety of Forms, Directions,

Intensities

and Complexities, had taken

144

LETTER TO TEACHEKS
the smallest
electron

order from

and

ion, to the widest

range of stellar space measured by the most powerful light-

ray, going through every possible

form
or

of physical evolution before man,

his
instinct,

or

his

reason,

or

any

other animal, or vegetable, or organic

life,

or vital energy, ever stirred

"

If then the evolutionist, irritated

by
of

treatment which seems a far-off echo

of

the

remarks

of

the

King

Brobdingnag to Gulliver nearly two hundred years ago, should still insist
highest account possible intensity of energy on of its consciousness, the degradation 1st

upon

his

mind

being

the

might probably lose his temper and his manners outright, to the point of
breaking out
"

The

psychologists have already told

is

you that Consciousness

only a phase

THE SOLUTIONS
in

145

the

decline

of

vital

energy

stage of weakening will.

We

physicists,

even

less

than

you Darwinists, deny

the intensity of the Will, but we know it to be stronger in the Scarab or the Scorpion, where
it is

unconscious,
it

than in
conscious

Monkey
;

or

Man, where

is

while

we watch, over and

abject

over
the

again,

with
of

incredulity,

apotheosis

a butterfly

or

the

flowering
to

of

an

orchid,

which reveal

our

scientific

sense

energy out of all We never that of man.

vital

an intensity of comparison with

tire

of

mar
;

velling at the essence of substance

energy of the but this glow-worm

at

the

atom
is

or

the

the

motive

behind our whole thermodynamic law.

"The

highest intensities of

nature,

such

produced the atom and the molecule were precisely the earliest
as

10

146

LETTER TO TEACHEKS
scale.

on our

Of

the vital energies in

the order of time we cannot pretend

to

know much,
to

since

all

the

types

seem

have

first

developed themselves,
millions of years,

during a great
in water, or

many

under ground, in conditions indefinitely varied and altogether un known but the moment an animal
;

appears above ground, it turns out to be a Silurian Scorpion, a type of the intensest vital energy that ever lived,
if

one

can

trust

the

entomologists.

Next, in the Carboniferous,

first

we happen
a

on a

dragon-fly with

spread
feet.

of

wing

much
702).

(Dana,
like

exceeding Carboniferous
forests,

two

insects,

carboniferous

suggest in

tensities indefinitely stronger in creative

power than any energies known to be In fact, no creative at work today.

energies whatever are

known

to be at

THE SOLUTIONS

147

work today, unless it be the radiating Mere heat creates nothing. activities.
Neither heat nor
for
its

absence accounts
of
vital

any
nor

of

the

problems
cell,

energy,
form,

neither for the

nor the

the

movement,
the
does

nor

the

consciousness, nor the descent, nor the

inheritance,

nor

intelligence,

of

organisms
for

nor

motion

account

direction.

No

intelligent

man
purely

now-a-days is satisfied with a mechanical formula.

"

Palaeontologists talk only of speciali

as

sation,

though the
is

more

elaborate

type were the

opposite

higher intensity. more likely to be

The
true.

Geology suggests plainly

least
fifty

that, after at

million
life

years of conditions
impossible

which

made

except
dissi

under water, these anarchic forces

pated themselves so far as to settle into

148

LETTER TO TEACHERS

an equilibrium which showed itself on land in the wild exuberance of the

carboniferous forests, and

which then

developed into the wilder exuberance of How long this the Eocene mammals.

exuberance

and he

is

Saporta has told us also authority for the fact,

lasted,

not the theory, I say,

that the equi

librium was overthrown by the steady

Gaudry, another sufficient authority, has added that vital energy fell step by step, and phase by
dissipation of energy.

phase, with

solar

energy.

The

geolo

gists in general

seem

to agree

with the

astronomers in teaching that both forms of energy will continue to fall in

intensity until

both disappear.
perfectly
at

Mean
to

while we

are

liberty

teach that the relative intensity of each

phase measured the relative intensity of each creation of land-organisms in the

THE SOLUTIONS
order of
time.
it
;

149
at

We
we

are not only are logically

it.

liberty to do

com
other

pelled

to

insist

upon

No

order of sequence can be

made
in

to accord

with the positively miraculous properties

which defy explanation

in inorganic nature.
"

organic as

We

all

remember

the
to

desperate
fit

efforts

that

Darwin made

within

a uniformitarian schedule these violent

leaps
in

the energy of evolution,

realise

but

we seldom

how

difficult

he found

the task of convincing himself that his

own scheme was

said,

convenient.
did,

When
chill,

he

as

he often

that he

never

thought of the
a cold

eye without a

the eye, to this day (1860), gives

me

shudder,

he meant,

among

other things,
for

that his theory was good

nothing as a convenient means of

explaining

why

the eye

should have

150

LETTER TO TEACHERS
its start,

leaped to perfection from

it

when

should have been the slowest in the

order of evolution.
the
first fish,

In

fact,

the eye of

at the

beginning of geo
least

logical

time,
his
;

was

at

as
still

good as
living

that

of

descendant

unchanged somewhere in Silurian

of

and

the

first

trilobites,

ages,

had eyes
facets.

twelve

or fifteen

thousand

Assuredly, says Gaudry, we marvel at such complication in creatures of such

great antiquity, but

we cannot conclude
its

that the organ of sight reached

perfection
in

whole
for

the primary period,

probably the thirty thousand facets of

Remopleurides were not equal in value to the two beautiful eyes of our actual

mammals.
gone on
tertiary

probably might well cause Darwin a chill but had he

;

Such

to say that the decline of the

quadrupeds caused him a worse

THE SOLUTIONS

151

shudder, he would have said only what

Dana seemed

to feel,

and what

strikes

every physicist with astonishment when he reads it in Dana, about the universal
stunting of animal
life

in recent times.

In South America alone, during and

since
species

the
of

glacial

epoch,

the

extinct

quadrupeds

number more

than

hundred,

while,

among
order
species

the
of

peculiarly

South
the

American
extinct

Ant-eaters,

were
that
conti

more

numerous
exist

than

all

those

now
nent,

in that

part of the
larger

and

were

far

animals.

In Australia the Marsupials prove the As on the other conti same law
:

nents, the
side

moderns are dwarfs by the

ancient
species.

of

the

As
part

universal
size

rule,

the fact of
of
a

dwindling
of

holds

true

large

the mammals, including elephants and

152

LETTER TO TEACHERS

herbivores as well as
edentates,
6

many
and

carnivores,

rodents

marsupials:

The kinds

that continued into

modern
not

time became

dwindled
over

in

the change
globe,

wherever found
withstanding
climates
large
are

the

the
still

fact

that

genial

to

be

found

over

regions/

(Dana, 997).
neither

Neither

Kelvin
nor
facts

nor

Faye,

Lapparent
the
brutal

Flammarion, asserted

of degradation nearly so strongly

as

Dana.
"

To

this
to

law,

which

has

already

reduced us
world,

living in an impoverished

you evolutionists require us physicists, under some mysterious pen

alty,

to

make
of

for

you an exception

in

favor

man.

We

cannot do

it.

We

are willing to yield

much

of the

old mechanical ground.

We

grant that

we cannot explain why,

in

man

or

THE SOLUTIONS
in

153

molecule, the primitive

energies of

nature took directions which imply, in our limited experience, a reasoning

forethought.

Cause

is

a transcendental
grasp.

problem

beyond

our

We

no

longer venture even to assert that

we

know

the creative forces at

all.

We say

only that in the world which we do know, we can see nothing supernatural
in
action.

Infinite

complication

we

admit,

but

no
later,

ultimate contradiction.

Sooner or
tion, to

whether

man

every apparent excep or radium, tends

of physics.

fall

within the domain

Against this necessity, human beings have always rebelled. For thousands
of years they have stood apart, superior
to physical laws.

The time has come

when they must yield. The claim that Reason must be

"

classed

as

an

energy of the highest

154

LETTER TO TEACHERS
is

intensity

itself

unreasonable.
is

On
in
in

the
time,

contrary,

Reason

the

last

and

therefore

the

lowest

According to our western standards, the most intense phase of human Energy occurred in the form of
tension.
religious

and

artistic

emotion,

perhaps
;

in the Crusades

and Gothic Churches

then,

but
increased

since
in

though
mass,

vastly

apparent

human
rapidity

energy has
to
as
lose
it

lost intensity

and continues

with

accelerated

the

Church proves.
as

society,

volume,

Organised in it becomes a

multiplied number

of enfeebled units,

on

which,

like

the

eye

in

insects,

reason acts as an enormously multiplied

lens,

converging nature

lines

of will,

and taking direction from

adding nothing of
indeed,
or
its

them, but

own.
a

Man

has,

had,

in

few of his

THE SOLUTIONS
stems,
sion,

155

some faculty
or

for artistic expres

not nearly so strong as that of

plants,
birds,

some some

some

butterflies,

or

but

more

varied.

This

instinct
earlier,

he probably inherited from an more gifted, animal but as a

;

creative

energy he

inherited

next to

nothing.
beside

The coral polyp is a giant him. As an energy he has but

function
:

one dominant
celerating the

that of ac

operation of the second

law of thermodynamics. So far as his reason acts as an energy at all, it is

a miraculous invention for this purpose,

which

inspires
;

wonder

and

almost

but in strictness the reason worship does no work, it is only a mechan ism nature s we which energy,
;

have

agreed

to

call

Will,

that

lies

behind

reason,

does

the work,
"

and
!

degrades the energy in doing

it

156

LETTER TO TEACHERS

Evidently, on these lines, no sort of

agreement

is

possible.

The two

figures

contradict each other beyond the chance

of conciliation.
diction
to

Of

course the contra

has been
it

slightly
;

exaggerated
the physicist

make

clear

but
lost

if

had not himself

potential

the high literary

of

Swift

and

Voltaire,

he

would exaggerate to much better pur pose, and would handle the unfortu
nate creature called

Man

in a temper

such as anyone may renew who cares to go back to Bunyan or Dante or the Bible, not to mention the Prophets
in

particular;

but he would convince

refuses
to

no one.

be degraded in self-esteem, of which he has never

Man

had
and

enough
he

to

save

him from

bitter

self-reproaches.

He
it.

yearns for flattery,

needs

The

contradiction
is

between science and instinct

so radi-

THE SOLUTIONS
cal
that,

157

though science should prove twenty times over, by every method

of

demonstration
is

known
the

to

it,

that

man

a thermodynamic

instinct

would
it

reject

mechanism, proof, and

it

whenever

should
to die.

be

convinced,

would have
If the

dead-lock were a

new

thing,

the situation would not be so

difficult,

but the history of the

years
tells

last five
else.

hundred
began

of

little

Man

by usurping the rank of lord of creation.

Galileo and

Newton succeeded

in depos
as the

ing him,

much

against his will,

Church very candidly

confessed,

but

he has never despaired of reinstating himself by means of his Reason. The

doctrine of

evolution

seemed, in

the

nineteenth century, to favor him.

fifty

For

years, society

flattered

itself that
it,

science

stood

solidly

behind

lifting

158
it

LETTER TO TEACHERS
to higher,

up from lower powers

it

and
self-

restoring

to its

old rank and

respect as child

and heir

to the infinite.

The
no

contrary assertion of Kelvin had

upon it whatever. Indeed if Eduard von Hartmann is right, society

effect

deliberately chose to be silent about the direction

of

physics,
it
;

and

refused

to

think or talk about

but silence has

never stopped this dispute, at least in western civilisation, since the martyrdom of Prometheus, and merely hurried the

moment when, on
another

scientific

principles,

catastrophe,

like

that

of

the

Newtonian
nent.

philosophy,

became

immi

William

Thomson

and

Clausius,

Helmholz and Balfour Stewart, asserted and reiterated the certainty of this
catastrophe, in
asserted
it,

vain, as

Descartes had

also in vain,

two hundred

THE SOLUTIONS
years before;

159

but Descartes offered a

compromise, and in that respect differed Descartes proposed to from Kelvin.

free

man from

material bondage, pro

all

vided he might mechanize

energies.

other vital

Society
the
dog,

rose

in

arms

to

protect

and

so

defeated the
to

scheme, leaving
asserting
in the

the world

go on

two

contradictory

principles

same breath, down

and

to the present

day, to the undiminished embarrassment of

Universities,

with

little

per

ceptible change

in the situation, except

that the
to

Universities of today hesitate

assert

with confidence the old con

authority, showing
distinct

viction

of spiritual
respect
a

in

this
;

decline

in

energy

while technical instruction has

or

reached,

seems on
point

the verge
it

of

reaching,
insist
its

the

where

must
of

on the universal
law.

application

thermodynamic

160

LETTER TO TEACHERS

Since compromise of principle seems to be out of the question, there remains

only

the

resource
is

of

direct

conflict.

Each party
horns
of a of

thrown

back

on

the

dilemma,
Saint

the same old

dilemma
Descartes,

Augustine

and

the dead-lock of free-will.

of physics will ask his
professor

The

professor

colleague, the

of

history,

to

explain
raises
its

the process by which energy

own

potential

without

cost,

since

this

desired
earliest

has been an object greatly by school-masters from the

ages,

known

and would singu

larly simplify the professorial accounts.

The
raise

teacher

of

history,

who
trying

has
to

trouble

enough

already in
of
his

the

potential

scholars

energy, can
colleague to

only retort by asking his

show how

his

own

teach

ing

proves

progressive

enfeeblement

THE SOLUTIONS
and degradation of
radationist
quality.

161

The

deg-

admit
it,

it,

might be quite ready to and quite competent to prove

but he knows that he has already turned his own thermodynamic law
into

a means of convincing society of

contrary.

the

when
cal

year 1830, the great development of physi

school-teaching take for granted that
in

Since

the

energies began, all

to

has learned

man

progress

mental

energy

is

measured by his
forces,

capture of physical
to

amounting
horse-power

some
from

fifty

million

steam
least as

coal,

and

at

much more from chemical and

;

elementary sources

besides

indefinite

potentials in his stored experience,

and
of

progressive

rise

in

the

intensities

the forces

he
little

keeps in

constant use.
of
all

He
this

cares

what
;

becomes
is

new power
11

he

satisfied

to

162

LETTER TO TEACHEKS
that

lie habitually develops heat at 3000 Centigrade and electricity by the hundred thousand volts, from

know

sources of indefinitely degraded energy

and

that

his

mind

has

learned

to

control

them.

Man s
this
its

Reason

once

credited with

addition

of volume

and

intensity,

victory

seems

assured.

The

teacher of history need

then trouble himself with no further

doubts of Evolution
of
physics
;

but the teacher

at
least to

seems

an

ignorant world whose destiny hangs on the balance, very much required to

defend himself.

Although
chology
old
it

this
less

is

form of physical psy than a hundred years

to

has already taken possession of

so

society
in

completely as
of

serve

it,

place

the

old

religious

and

mechanical formulas, for a philosophical

THE SOLUTIONS
foundation.
to

163

The
as

historian has a right

;

use

it

such

but

according to

the understanding of the physical law

already

discussed,

one

would

think
it.

physicists

debarred from admitting

it

To them
although
but,

should

seem an
to

illusion,

one

difficult

deal

with

bystander has means of judging, they would still be at liberty to turn the dilemma about, and seek
as far

as a

to

impale

their

antagonist

on

the

reversed horn,

by suggesting that the

theory of tropism or induction, or of

physico-chemical relations in general, seems to require that the psychical will,

under such conditions, should not absorb

physical

energy so

much

as

physical
will.

energy would absorb the psychical

Two
if

similar energies,
to a

would tend
powerful

when in contact, common level force,

;

enough,

would

control

164

LETTER TO TEACHEES

thought; the ocean would dissolve the

crystal
lutionist

of

salt

so

that,

if

the evo

should insist
of
his

on

identifying

the

quality psychical energy with the quantity of his steam- or water-

power or electric voltage, the physicist would expect to see the psychical
potential of society vanish as suddenly
as the potential of a

Ley den

jar.

might be Perhaps quicker than the technical schools to

the
Universities
see

the

point
in

of

this

retort,

since

they

claim,

theory,

to

deal

with

quality rather than with quantity, and possibly

some professors have noticed

that quality

may

sometimes suffer from

contact with volume.

precisely

The
from

idea
it
!

is

not

new,

far

even

beyond the pale of European Univer sities, portions of society have shown a

somewhat enfeebled

instinct

of revolt

THE SOLUTIONS
against

165

the psychical processes of the Various writers press and the public. have discussed the effect of dissolving
society

into

single

mixture;

even

name,
it.

panmixia

has been made

for

Nothing

is

commoner than the

prejudice against mechanical energy as

a

weakener of nervous energy when ever it gets control, as in manufactur

ing

towns

or

the

belief

that

great

masses

of people

under uniform con

ditions tend to a mechanical uniformity

of mind,

as

in

agricultural

districts

but
less

the
in

interest

of

the

subject

lies

the
the

application of the theory

than in

shape which
to

the

would
conform
of

have
with

take
rest

in

theory order to
the

the

of

law

best

thermodynamics. Physicists know what their mathematical formulas

for electricity

and gases and solutions

166

LETTER TO TEACHERS
;

are

historians

with
rival

the

have no right to meddle methods of colleagues in

;

departments

but

they

cannot

help feeling curiosity to know whether Ostwald s line of reasoning would logically end in subjecting both psychi
cal

and

the
heat,

physico-chemical natural and obvious

energies

to

analogy

of

and extending the law of Entropy

"

over

all.

(Osfcwald,

Vorlesungen,"

Leipzig,

1902, p. 398).
physicists

Few
see

would be likely

to

any

scientific sense in this personal

application
is

of

their

law,

and no one

readier than the

historian to admit
is

probably not so simple as any formula that he could state, or understand if stated to him.
that vital

Energy

The most ardent

hardly think
it

lover

of paradox,

the most inveterate humorist,

would
while
to

worth

his

THE SOLUTIONS
follow a train of reasoning

167

which would

surely immolate physics and metaphysics

together.

Such amusements seem

;

to

be

reserved for astronomers

but neither

historians nor sociologists can afford to

let

themselves be driven into admitting

that every gain of power,

from gun
to
at

powder to steam, from the dynamo the Daimler motor, has been made
the
cost of

man

and of woman
end

vitality.

The

mischiefs thus

charged
there.

upon

Reason

would

not

Metaphysics as well as mathematics would measure enfeeblement phi

;

losophy

as

well

as
;

mechanics would
Universities as

mark degradation
close

the

well as the technical schools would alike

their

doors without waiting for

the sun to grow cold. Direct

conflict,

therefore,

seems

to

be as barren as compromise.

Hereto-

168
fore in

LETTER TO TEACHEES

human

experience, such reason

ing would have been dismissed at once as only the usual futile attempt at reduction to the absurd. That it would
pass for such in a University of today

an open question it sounds rather like another way of saying what Arndt, Branco and Hopf, as well as Eousseau
is
;

and a thousand

others,

have said
years
;

for

the past hundred and

in

fifty

but

any case
it

it

has no value for teachers,

the stoppage of

since

leads only to

teaching altogether.

If the teacher of

history cares to contest the ground with

the teacher of physics, he must become a physicist himself, and learn to use
laboratory methods.
tools

He
as

needs technical
the electrician
like

quite
;

as

much

does

large
s

formulas,
;

Willard

Gibbs

Eule of Phases

generalisations,

no

matter

how temporary

or

hypo-

THE SOLUTIONS
thetical,

169

such as

all

mathematicians use

for

the convenience of their scholars.

field

The whole
with such

of physics

is

covered

temporary structures, mere approximations to truth, but in con

stant

demand

as tools.

Mathematicians
they have to assume that
;

practice

absolute freedom

the

rightand

use
is,

it,

a straight line
distance
please.

or

is

not, the shortest

two points, as they In the whole domain of science,

between
of cultivation
is

no

field

poorer in such

labor-saving devices than that of

history, yet

human
is

Man,

as a

form of energy,

most need of getting a firm footing on the law of thermodynamics. One

in

cannot doubt that Lord Kelvin could

have

suggested

half-a-dozen

figures

which

would
he

answer

the

purpose,
well

although

might

very

have

refused to waste his

own

stock of vital

170

LETTER TO TEACHEES
effort to

energy in the

prove his thermoa

dynamic
eocene

ascent

from

hypothetical

lemur,
;

or even

from a duck

billed platypus

neither of which would

have promised energetic means of saving him from the pitfalls which his keen
mathematical instinct would have shown

him

as the

work of

his fellow-physicists,

planted directly in his path. Whatever the difficulties,

Kelvin

would have faced them honestly. He had courage beyond the common, and
if

the problem
as

had
it

been

forced
others,

on

him
would

he
not

forced

on

he

even

have

felt

himself

obliged to obey his

in his last words

own
life

laws.

Almost

he

pathetically pro

claimed
in
its

that

his

was

failure

long

effort to

reduce his physical

term.

energies to a single
left

Dying he

the

unity,

duality or multiplicity

THE SOLUTIONS
of energies as
"A

171

much
anarchy

disputed as ever.
reigns
in

certain

the

sciences of nature s

domain,"

says

M.

Lucien Poincare, who

sufficient authority
"

regarded as a any venture may

is

be

risked

no law appears rigorously

necessary."

Within

the

past

year

Professor Joly of Dublin has seriously risked such a venture in

activity

his

"

Radio

and

Geology

an account of

the

Influence

of Radio-active
History,"

Energy
(London,
general
the

on
1909)

Terrestrial
;

and
gathers

although

the
it

reader

from

mainly
is is

conclusion that physical science

or less chaotic, this conclusion

more
only

what
can

he
begin
is

needs
to
all

to

reach

before

he

deal

with vital
"

science
see

which
middle-

chaos.

We

the

and

the

end-series

of

the
;

phylogenetic

series,"

says

Reinke

172

LETTER TO TEACHERS

"that

we do not
of

see
it

the

is

self-evident,

since

beginning was built up

s

in

period
is

the

earth

history
"

which
("

for
p. if

us

transcendental

Einleitung,"

612);

we could not
see
it.

understand
far
as

it

we did
the

So man,

concerns
period
its

history

of

every

of

the

earth

history,
is

beyond

actual

condition,

trans

cendental.

The

anthropologist

knows

nothing whatever about it. Among a thousand possible varieties of primitive man, he has scarcely more than two
or three doubtful clues to follow, and

thus far these lead nowhere.

ently
this
is

Appar

the

only certain result

in

of

sixty

years

effort

physics and
logi

physiology.
cal

Forced back on the

of
asserting

suicide
act

or

accepting
prefer
at

an
to

of

creation,

biologists

admit mental enfeeblement, even

THE SOLUTIONS
the
risk
;

173
to

of

being

driven

admit

both

so that, if the safety of society

should seem
ing
a

now
the

multiple

depend on assum cause, as of old on

to

establishing

unity

of

creation,

nothing obliges society to persist in its If the physicist monist scheme.

cannot

make mind the

master, as the

metaphysician would like, he can at least abstain from making it the slave.

So

little

essential

is

monism, that
startled

M.

H.

Poincare

lately

the

that formula

world by avowing that physicists used only because all science

would become impossible if they were not allowed to assume simple hypothe
ses
p.
"

La
;

Science

et

THypothese,"

173)
is

but

this

mental

need

of

also a weakness, which gives unity the degradationist an artificial and

altogether unfair advantage.

The

con-

174

LETTER TO TEACHEES
unity
is

venience of

beyond question,
morals
as

and

convenience

overrides

well as

money, when a vast majority

or not, are invited
in

of minds, educated
to

live

complex
only the

of

anarchical

energies,

with

privilege

of

acting as chief anarchists.

Bewildered
the

and outraged they reject but they find that of

degradation so

image

diffusion

or

simple and so natural The Dar as to satisfy every want. winian readily admits that Kelvin s

sun accounts for evolution better than

Darwin

did

and

he

is

only

too

ready to drop

all

the school-phrases,

to call the process Transformation,

so,
is

and

quietly,

surrender the issue.

He

equally ready to admit that Darwin never supplied a motive power that

should vary in force with the phenom ena; he might even go so far as to

THE SOLUTIONS
concede
that

175

the

want

of

such

an

energy had embarrassed biology nearly while he to the point of paralysis

;

must honestly grant that Kelvin began mathematically by giving himself, from
the

power he needed, in the degree in which he needed it,

start,
all

the

so

that

his

system supplied
the

its

own
by
and

force,

like
its

Niagara
energies.

river,

degrading may not be

unity
of
all
;

own

Simplicity
truth,

evidence

of

is

perhaps the most deceptive the innumerable illusions of

mind
in

but both are primary instincts man, and have an attraction on

the

mind akin

to

that

of gravitation

on matter.

The
and

idea

of

unity sur
;

vives the idea of

it

God

or of Universe

is

innate

intuitive.

Thought

floats

much more
it,

against

easily towards than and from the moment when

176

LETTER TO TEACHEES

any form or symbol or medium of energy, was likened to a falling sub stance tending to an ultimate ocean of
other

heat, or electricity, or thought, or

Entropy, nothing was simpler than to

plot

out

the

ordinates
its

and
of

abscissas

that

marked

curve

evolution.
biol

Astronomy, geology, palaeontology,

ogy, psychology, could all
tically

move majes

down

the decline.

Perhaps the feature of the scheme that was most repulsive to instinct, was
most
seductive
to

science,

its

fatal

facility in

accounting for Reason. All would tend to develop organisms nervous systems when dynamically ill-

nourished.

As
have

the Drosera

is

repre
diet

sented
insects

to

taken
it

to

of

when

could

no

longer

nourish

itself sufficiently as

a vegetable,

or as a tree

may throw

out wider and

THE SOLUTIONS

177

deeper roots in the degree that com plexity might bring moisture, so the
vital

energy which had developed in the exuberance of physical quantity so

long as

dynamic supplies were in excess of its needs, would turn itself,

its its

as

conditions
"

were

impoverished,
or,

into

those

connecting,

as

they

are technically called, association-fibres.,

which
together

make
as

nerve-currents

work
without

they

could

not

being thus

associated."

Thought then

appears in nature as an arrested, in other words, as a degraded, physical

action.

The theory

is

convenient, and

convenience makes law, at least in the

laboratory.

In

this

freedom

of

energies

the

physicist

handling his enjoys another

the
sociologist.

easy

advantage
already
12

over

As

pointed out, the physicist

178
safe

LETTER TO TEACHERS
from interference so long as he

is

can

promise expansion of power, or relief from pain while the oldest

still
;

and

driest

professor

of

history

would

smile at the idea of trying lo imitate

his

vivacious

colleague

by

telling

his

students, at the opening of the collegiate

year, that,

an approximately correct working hypothesis," he should proceed

"

as

to treat the history of

modern Europe
example of
"

and America
energies

as a

typical

indicating
"

degradation

with

headlong rapidity
death."

towards

"

inevitable

Probably he would have no more difficulty than the physicist has,

in

making

his material

fit

his figure

history can be written in one sense just but however as easily as in another
;

perfect this figure

might seem
it

to to

him
the

he would not think

suited

interests of the students or of the

Uni-

THE SOLUTIONS
versity,

179

in

spite of

the fact that the

University has never committed itself Indeed he could truth to the contrary.

Europe have never preached upward evolution

at
all.

fully say that the Universities in

History
its

began

with
that

starting-point

admitting as the speechless

to the use of

animal who raised himself

an inflected language must have made an effort greater and longer than the
effort

required for him, after perfecting

his tongue, to vulgarise

and degrade

it.

Even
facts

after

descending to the familiar

recent
that
evolution,

of

relatively

historians

never

teach

Egyptian
childlike

pyramids
Berlin.

and

tombs

show

inferiority to the

tombs and temples of Artists have never been known

on the history

to illustrate their lectures

of their art by showing

how much

the

180

LETTER TO TEACHERS
Pheidias

sculpture of

and

Praxiteles

might

have

been

improved

by

an

acquaintance with the sculpture of Lon don. Dramatists do not hold up to

derision the feebleness of Aeschylus or

the folly of
gigantic
force

Aristophanes

before

the

and

Rostand

and genius of Sardou on the Paris stage.

American professors do not read Pindar

or Lucretius aloud in order to suit the
intelligence

of

their

children

in

the

nurseries of

New York
seldom

and Chicago.
contempt
Great
devote vol

Historians
for

express
still

Thucydides, and umes to Alexander

Julius
Caasar.

the

and

They have
their

obstinately

shirked the
of elevation

duty of applying the law

to

view of history,
opposed
in
it.

but

rather

have

bitterly

Even the prophet

English
school,

of progress

the

Macaulay,

could

THE SOLUTIONS
not resist the
old
trick

181

of reviving a
"

conventional barbarian to gloat,

in the

midst of a vast

solitude,"

over the ex

hausted energies of England. Histories invariably use Kelvin s figure whenever

it

is

convenient,
in
set

and
as

talk
so

of

new
fresh

races

terms

much

fuel, or

oxygen, flung on the burnt-out while the greatest energies of empire

;

historical
is

work
"The

in the English language

called

Decline and

Fall."

Something less than two hundred and fifty years ago, all the greatest
scholars

and
the

wits

of

Europe
Swift
s

were
of

disputing
ancients

relative

superiority

and moderns.
still

Battle

of the Books

lives as a sparkling

record

of

it.

The moderns, having

the advantage of being alive, decided the result in their own favor, but,
until the

amazing influx of mechanical

182

LETTER TO TEACHERS
after

and physical energies

1830, the

European
clear

Universities

never

seemed
be

on

the

subject,

and would

today to reverse the judgment on such evidence as decided the case in 1700. Only an unusually
quite
likely

well-informed scholar
certainty

could

say with

what the German or French

Universities think about the

dogma

of

upward

evolution
is

in

the

year 1910,

but their record

a bad one.

On
record
is

the
is

dogma
worse.

of Degradation their If the

their

human
suffrages,

race
its

to

depend

on

state is a parlous one.

For a thousand

years, as

long as religion held sway, teachers were not merely permitted, they were obliged, to condemn the

human
due
eternal

race,

with
the

rare

exceptions,

only

to

pity

of

God,

to

degradation

following the near

THE SOLUTIONS
end
of the
world.

183

After
lost

1500
its

the

Church
schools

very

slowly

control

of education,

but the attitude of the

little

changed
history.

in

regard

to

human

In the University as

in the pulpit, the standard of excellence

remained

among the Greeks, or the Romans, or the Jews, when it was not
carried

back

to

the

Garden of Eden.
century,

In

the

nineteenth

everyone

knows how eagerly the public responded to Wagner s resuscitation of the Middle
Ages.
is

By most
as

artists

modern

life
is

assumed

decadence.
all,

What

most striking of have begun again,

to

the Universities
fifty years,

within

announce through their astrono

the

mers

approaching
;

demise

of the

through their geologists, the death of the earth and its occu
solar system

pants;

through

their

physicists,

the

184

LETTER TO TEACHERS
still

years

left

for

suns to shine, and

of

the

ultimate
to

destiny

the

celestial

universe

become
;

atomic

dust

at

270 Centigrade
of the race, and

while their anthro

pologists point out the rapid exhaustion

their newspapers

day

by day proclaim its steady degradation. What makes the matter infinitely worse
is

the

common,

daily experience that,

not

only in

Universities

but

also

at

every street-corner
city,

of every European

on every half-holiday, hundreds

of

of

thousands

men
day,
is

are

taught

to

believe with delight, that society,

to

down
illu

the

present

an unnatural

abortion,
sions,

sustained
to

by perverted
immediate
this

and destined
a

suicide.

To such
teaching

point

has

habit
itself,

of
at

gone,

that

society

every national and municipal election,

is

seen

physically

trembling;

per-

THE SOLUTIONS
plexed and confused
conscious of
right
as
its
it
;
;

185

feeling its
;

way

its

dangers

anxious to do
sores which,

ashamed of the
is

disfigure solemnly assured, and of the hideous tumors surface,

as
it

which,

is

incessantly
;

told,

are ravaging

its

vitals

half-willing to

be sacrificed, like Iphigenia, but timidly shrinking from staking the life, de
scribed as so worthless, on the gambler s

winning something wretched in an unknown beyond.

chance

of

less

Among
problem
should

all

these voluble

prophets,

the historian alone

for

may

not discuss the

lest

respect of youth,
still

he

make

more

serious an issue

which was serious before schools began.

If the silent, half-conscious, intuitive
faith of society could

be fixed,

it

might

always tending towards belief in a future equilibrium

possibly

be

found

186

LETTER TO TEACHERS

of

some

sort,

that
;

should

end

in

becoming
to
first

an idea which belongs mechanics, and was probably the

stable

idea that nature taught to a stone,

;

or to an apple before teaching

to a

it

to

lemur or an ape Newton. Unfortu

nately for society, the physicists again

abruptly interfere, like Sancho Panza

doctor,

by earnest
it

protests that, if one

physical law exists more absolute than

another,
is

the law that stable equi

librium

is

death.
is

society in stable

by definition, one that has no history and wants no historians. Thomson and Clausius startled the
equilibrium

world by announcing this principle in but the ants and bees had 1852
;

announced
before, as

it

some

millions

of

years

a law of organisms,

and

it

may have
in

been established

still

earlier,

more convincing form, by some of

THE SOLUTIONS
the
caterpillars.

187

According to the recent doctrine of Will or Intuition, this conclusion was the first logical and
ultimate result reached in the evolution
of

organic

life

but the professor of

accept

history

who

shall

the

hymen-

optera and lepidoptera as teachers in the place of Kelvin and Clausius, will

probably

find as

himself
If

in

the

same
at

dilemma

before.

he

aims

carrying his audience with him, he will have to adopt the current view of a
society

rising

to

an

infinitely

high
will

potential of energy, and there remaining

in equilibrium, the only view

which

ensure
well

him the sympathy

probably,
of

of men, as
caterpillars
;

as,

but
will

if

he wants

to conciliate science,

he

have

to deride the idea of a stable

equilibrium of high potential, and insist that no stable social equilibrium can

188

LETTER TO TEACHERS

be reached except by degrading social energies to a level where they can fall

no further, and do no more useful work.

Perhaps
this formula, too,

may

please

many students, whose potential of vital or, in energy, simpler words, whose
love of work,
is less
;

archaic than that

of the ants and bees of practical teaching,

but as a matter
as a

mere choice
the two
for

between technical formulas,

methods

result in the

same dilemma

the old-fashioned evolutionist

to

who

clings

his

ideals

of

indefinite

progress.

Between two equilibriums, each mechani cal, and each insisting that history is
at

an end,

lost forever

in the ocean of

statistics,

the classical University teacher

of history, with his intuitions of free will and art, can exist only as a sporadic
survival to illustrate for his colleagues

the workings of

their

second

law of

thermodynamics.

THE SOLUTIONS

189

To some
tion

extent,

already,

he

finds

himself actually in this awkward situa

where

his

impatience

at his

colleagues betray continued existence.

polite,

With

singular

unanimity, the
a

but embarrassed authorities agree that

history
is

not

science,

and
permit

show
that

marked unwillingness
it

to

shall ever, with their consent,

become

one.
will

Except on their own terms, they have nothing to do with human

and their
terms

evolution,

commonly

require that they should treat

man

as

a creature habitually striving to attain

imaginary ideals always contrary to His Will and that of Nature have law.
been constantly at strife, and continue to be so, under the Baconian philosophy and the law of Energetik, as decidedly
as

under the scholastic philosophy and

the

Summa

of St.

Thomas Aquinas.

190

LETTEK TO TEACHEES
the friendly
Vitalist
treats

Even

his

brother Vitalists with candor not to be

mistaken for compliment, because,

the history of humanity there
is

"

in

only

so

much
;

science

as

there

always is no

while the most naif of all the historian s nawetes is his favorite
History"

of a understanding problematic humanity can be furthered

notion that the

"

"

by adding

to

it

a more

problematic
"

phantom
begriffe

of Descent.

(Driesch,

Natur-

und

Natururtheile."

Leipzig,
is

1904, p. 237.)
to

In truth, one
"

driven

admit that

the theory of
"

descent,"

as

Von

Zittel says,

has introduced new

natural history,
;

ideas

into

descriptive

and has given it a higher purpose but we must not forget that it is still only a theory, which requires to be proved."

On

this point, the professor of history

who has

any

smattering

of

special

THE SOLUTIONS
training,

191

knows

all

that he needs to

know.
to go

He
or

is

as

free as ever

he was

on compiling tables of
reediting
so-called

dates, or
"

editing,
ments,"

docu

or seeking to

infuse into the

memories

of

his

students a sufficient

acquaintance

with

the

statute

Quia
his

Emptores.

He
for

has fully
or

made up
all,

mind
as

either

against the exist

as well

ence of any philosophy at

whether

he

is

required to lecture
in

on such a philosophy
or

case

it

does,

does

not,

exist.
is

Every competent
supposed, justly
his

teacher
or

of history
to

unjustly,

know

Herbert
if

Spencer

and Auguste Comte, even

not his Lamprecht.

When

his

phys

iological colleagues ridicule his aspira

tions to science, the professor of history

seems

little

disposed

to

resent
it
;

their

attitude,

but rather encourages

and

192

LETTER TO TEACHERS
is

he
so
;

right, if they are right, in doing

but,

none the

less,

he finds himself
time in three
face

thus placed, for the

first

hundred
painful,

years,
if

face

to

with

In problem. one respect his dilemma is worse than

not
a
vital

in the sixteenth century, since

Bacon

physical teaching aimed at freeing the

mind
law
on
of
all

from

servitude,

while
a

the

Entropy imposes
energies,

servitude

including the mentaL

The degree
physicists

of

freedom

steadily
rest,

and
the

rapidly diminishes.

Without
push

gently

history

down

the decline, as

yet

scarcely conscious,
to plot out

which they are certain abscissae and ordinates

can
fix

by

as soon as they
sufficient

and

agree

upon a
variables,

number of normal
extension.

not with

conscious intention but

by unconscious
of
current

Every

reader

THE SOLUTIONS
literature

193
is

knows

that

the

subject

touched by half the books he reads, and that the most popular are the Few volumes are most outspoken.

more widely known than M. Gustave

Le Bon

"

Physiologic
closes

des

Foules,"

(1895), which

with the following

a a

paragraph
"

That

which

formed

people,

unity, a

block, ends

by becoming an
without

agglomeration
cohesion,
still

of

individuals

held together for a time

by
is

its

traditions

and

institutions.

This
their

the phase

when men, divided by

aspirations, but
to

interests

and

no longer

knowing how

govern themselves, ask

;

to be directed in their smallest acts

and

when

the State exercises

influence.

With
soul
it

absorbing the definitive loss of

its

the old ideal, the race ends

losing
its
;

by

entirely

becomes nothing more

13

194

LETTER TO TEACHERS

than a dust of isolated individuals, and returns to what it was at the start, a
crowd."

Under
the

the thinnest

veil of

analogy
scientific

physicist-historian,

with

calmness, condemns our actual society as

he condemns the sun; for the

the end of
all

"

crowd
to

"

which Gustave Le Bon declares

social
"

be
at
its

evolution
"

is

not

the same

crowd

that

made

beginning, and is wholly incapable of doing useful work. Gustave Le Bon is

himself a physicist of wide renown, but he is remarkable also as director of the

"

Bibliotheque
tifique,"

de

Philosophic

Scien-

the

best

known

of all recent

attempts to lighten the load of technical

instruction

and of
most

scientific

Among
dation
"

the

recent
is

baggage. these of
"

admirable volumes
(Paris,

one on

Degra

November, 1908), by

THE SOLUTIONS

195

M. Bernhard Brunhes, whose

position

as Director of the Observatory of the

guarantees his competence In one or two to narrate the story.

Puy

de

Dome

paragraphs, with the lucidity which so

often distinguishes

French thought from that of some other races, M. Brunhes

the

summarizes

values
:

of

the

two

philosophies of history
"

The preceding remarks

give the key

to the

apparent opposition which exists between the doctrine of Evolution and

the principle of Degradation of energy. Physical science presents to us a world

which

unceasingly wearing itself out. philosophy which claims to derive

is

support from biology, paints compla cently, on the contrary, a world steadily

improving, in which physiological

goes on always growing perfect

life

to the

point of reaching full consciousness of

196
itself in

LETTER TO TEACHERS

man, and where no limit seems Observe imposed on eternal progress.

that
this

second idea,

of

indefinite

progress,

has furnished

much more
for

material

than
!

the

first, is

literary

development

This

no doubt because
it

the scientific facts on which

is

con

structed lend themselves to vulgarisation

far

more

easily

than the

scientific facts

whose combination forms the principle

of Carnot.

From

our point of

view

the principle of degradation of energy would prove nothing against the fact
of Evolution.

The

progressive trans

formation of species, the realisation of

more

perfect organisms, contain nothing

contrary to the idea of

loss of

the

constant
vast

useful energy.

Only the
erect

and grandiose conceptions of imagina

tive

philosophers

who

into

an

absolute principle the law of

universal

THE SOLUTIONS

197

progress/ could no longer hold against

one
that
side,

of

the

most

fundamental
to
us.

ideas

physics

reveals

On

one
out
;

therefore,

the

world
the

wears

on

another

side,

appearance

on

earth of living beings

elevated, and,
in a

more and more

slightly different

order

of

ideas,

civilisation

development of in human society, undoubt

the

edly give the impression of a progress and a gain." (p. 193.)

This, then,
is

the extreme limit of

If a

the physicists

concessions.

com
rest

promise
there.

is

to

be

made,

it

must

The

degradationist

can so far
rigor of his

ameliorate the immediate

law as to energy

admit

that degradation
or

of

may

create,

convey,
;

an

but impression of progress and gain if the evolutionist presses the inquiry
further,

and asks where

this proposed

198

LETTER TO TEACHERS
will lead

compromise
of
lies

him

as a teacher

young men,

what

future reality

behind the impression of progress, -what amount of illusion is to be

as

reckoned

an

independent variable
the degrada-

in the formula of gain,

tionist
replies,

quite

candidly

and

honestly, that
is

this impression

of gain

derived from an impression of Order due to the levelling of energies but

;

that

the

impression

of

Order

is

an

illusion

consequent on

the

dissolution

of the higher Order which

had supplied,
all

by lowering
useful

its

inequalities,

the

energies
reality

that

caused
the

progress.
is,

The

behind

illusion,

therefore,

absence of the power to do

or

useful work,

what man knows,

:

in

his finite sensibilities, as death

"

Thus Order

in the material universe

utility

would be the mark of

and the

THE SOLUTIONS
measure
far

199
this

of

value

and

Order,

from being spontaneous, would tend

to

constantly

destroy

itself.

Yet the

Disorder towards which a collection of

molecules moves,
initial
is

in

chaos

rich

in

no respect the differences and

useful

inequalities
gies
;

that generate
it

ener

on the contrary
of

is

the average

mean

equality and homogeneity in

absolute

want of

coordination."

(p. 53.)

Perhaps an instructor needs a memory

extending over sixty years in order to measure the revolution in thought which
such
teaching implies. Every rightminded University Professor of 1850 dismissed the ideas of Kelvin, as he

did those of Malthus, Karl

Marx and

as fantastic. They Schopenhauer, shocked him, partly for their extrava gance but chiefly for what he regarded In as their destructive pessimism.

200

LETTER TO TEACHERS

1910, an American professor

who should
in
to

try to get below the surface of thought

in

Germany, Italy, France, or even England, would probably incline

the conclusion that Schopenhauer

may

be regarded as an optimist.

In reality pessimists and optimists have united on a system science which makes of
pessimism
optimism.
both.

the

logical
is

foundation
the
victim

of

History

of

Let any young student take up the last German book on Biology that happens to fall under his eyes. Within
the
to

hundred pages he is fairly sure come upon some assertion or assump

first

tion

of the
its

second law of thermody

namics in
"

dogmatic form

The Energetik of the

that the

living organism

consists, then, in the last analysis, in the

fact

itself,

organism, when left to tends in the direction of a stable

THE SOLUTIONS

201

equilibrium under the surrender of energy to the outer world. The reach

even ing of the stable equilibrium, means mere to death. the it, approach In this respect the organism acts like a clock that has run down." (Reinke,
"

Einleitung in die theoretische Biolop. 152.)

gie,"

In 1852, Thomson contented himself

by saying that
"
"

a restoration of energy

is

probably
"

ised matter.
"

never effected by organ In 1910, there is nothing

;

about it the probable become an axiom of biology.

fact

has

any University professor

answered
this

In 1852, would have

quotation

by the dry

remark that

was not an organism, and that history was not a science, since
society
it

could not be treated mathematically. Today, M. Bernhard Brunhes seems to

feel

no doubt that society

is

an organism,

202

LETTEE TO TEACHEKS
the
s

and

physicists

invariably

stretch

Kelvin

law over
Instead
in

all

organised matter

whatever.

convenience

being a mere treatment, the law is

of a

very

rapidly

becoming

dogma

of

absolute Truth.

As

of Degradation,

long as the theory as of Evolution, was

only

one of the

convenient

tools

of

science, the sociologist

for

complaint.
first

had no just cause and Every science,

all,

mathematics
it

of

uses

what

tools
is

likes.

The

Professor of Physics

not

teaching

Ethics

he

is

training

young men to handle concrete energy in one or more of its many forms, and
he has no choice but
convenient
formulas.
to use the

most

Unfortunately

the formula most convenient for

him

is

convenient for his colleagues in sociology and history, without press

not at
all

ing

the

inquiry

further,

into

more

THE SOLUTIONS
intimate

203
like

branches

of

practice

medicine,

jurisprudence

and

politics.

If the entire universe, in every variety of active energy, organic and inorganic,

human
can

or

divine,
is

is

to

be treated as

clock-work that

hardly go Hitherto forever.

running down, society on ignoring the fact

it

has often happened

could

that two systems of education, like the

Scholastic
side
still,

and

Baconian,

exist

by

side for centuries,

as they exist

in adjoining schools

and universi
device than
;

ties,

by no more
the

scientific

that of shutting their eyes to each other

but

universe

has

been

terribly

narrowed by thermodynamics. Already History and Sociology gasp for breath.

The department

of history needs to

concert with the departments of biology,

sociology and psychology

some common

formula or figure to serve their students

204
as

LETTER TO TEACHERS
a working

model
;

for

their
this

study
figure

of the vital energies

and

must be brought into accord with the

figures or formulas used

by the depart
mechanics
to

ment
serve

of

physics

and
as

their

students

models

for

physico-chemical and mechanical energies. Without the ad

the working

of

hesion

of physicists, the model would

cause greater scandal than though the

contradictions were
silently

ignored as

but the biologists, or, at least, the branches of science concerned with
;

now

humanity,

will

find

great

difficulty

in agreeing on

any formula which does not require from physics the abandon ment, in part, of the second law of

The mere formal thermodynamics. exception of Reason from the express operation of the law, as a matter of
teaching in the workshop,
is

not enough.

THE SOLUTIONS

205

Either the law must be abandoned in

respect to Vital

Vital

Energy altogether, or Energy must abandon Reason

as

altogether

one

of

its

forms,

and

return to the old dilemma of Descartes.

nothing prevents each instructor from aiming to unite with

each
of
his

Meanwhile

colleagues

in

some

sort

of approach to a

common understanding
;

about the
if

first

principle of instruction

each University solves the problem to its own satisfaction, the problem is,
for

in so far, solved

the whole

and

nothing need hamper the

if

effort of the

Universities to carry the process further,

it

promises

advantage.

If

the

physicists
last

and physico-chemists can at find their way to an arrangement

sociologists

that would satisfy the

historians, the

and

solved.

problem would be wholly Such a complete solution seems

206

LETTER TO TEACHERS
;

not impossible
the
it

but
as

at

present,

for

moment,

the stream runs,

also seems, to an impartial bystander,

to call for the aid of another

Newton.

INDEX
Aeschylus, 180
Agassiz, Louis, 64

Aquinas,

Augustine, Saint, 160 Saint Thomas,

92, 189

Ant-eaters, 151

Anthropoid ancestors, 55 Anthropology, 53-67, 94, 172

Aristotle, 91,

92

Arndt, 63, 168

B
Bacon, Lord, 81, 139, 192 Bain, Alex., 107
Bancroft, George, 13

Brain,
63,

evolution

of,

62,

102

Branco, 63, 168

Bergson, Henri,
lution

"L

Evo108-

Brunhes, Bernhard,
gradation,"

"Di

Creatrice,"

194-197,

110
Berlin, 74, 83, 179

201

Bruno, Giordano, 85
Buckle, 14

Blandet,

Bernoulli, Daniel, 86 theory of solar

contraction, 38, 45

Henry Thomas,

Bunyan, John, 156

Carboniferous period, 46, 13G, 146, 148

Carnot,
vSadi, 2,

38,

Clausius, N., 2, 4, 93, 158,

196

186 Comte, Auguste, 191

Consciousness,
telligence,

Chemical energy, 26, 161 Church, the, 154, 157, 183

Ciamician, Professor Giacomo, 91, 96

chiefly In-

109,

111,

144

207

208

INDEX
Creative

Conservation of Energy,

Evolution,

Law

of, 1,

2,

24,

119,

Henri Bergson,
110
Cretaceous period, 38
Crusades, 154

by 108-

120, 128
stated

by Tyndall, 6-10
93,

Cope, E. D., 56, 59 Creative Evolution,

153, 155, 172

103, 106, 146, 147, 148,

Daimler motor, 167

Dalton, John, 86 Dana, James D.
ual of
"

Degradation of Energy, convenience of, 174

Man
151,

social bearings of, 30,

78,

Geology,"

178,

196, 197,

152

198
used for history, 181183

Darwin, Charles,
of

Archiae and Blandet, 38 on the

eye, 149, 150, his

Law
22,

De Morgan,
mieres

"

J.,

Les Pre

Evolution,

21,

Civilisations,"

23, 33, 37, 54, 96, 134, 174, 190

71-73, 77
Descartes,
Kene",

81,

158,

Dastre,
la

A.,

"La

Mort,"

Vie 25-27
Fall,"

et

159, 205

Dissipation of Energy,

Law

"Decline

and

181

of,

2-4, 10, 11, 14, 15,

"Degradation,"

by Bernhard Brunhes, 194-197

of

16, 24, 68, 148,

200
pro

applies
cesses,

to
3,

vital
4,

Degradation
(See
26, 39,

Energy,
20,

25-27,

Dissipation)

52,

78, 79,

124, 133

152

Dollo

Law

of Evolution,
"

equivalent to diffusion,
122, 123
to
all

52
Driesch, Dr. Hans,

Der

applies

vital

Vitalismus"13,
turbegriffe,"

"Na-

processes, 25, 26, 27,

190

117, 200-202

Drosera, 176

INDEX
E
Egypt, 179
Electricity, 26, 100, 137

209

Evolution,
(See

Ly ell

law of
22

uniformity

of,

Energetik

Thermo

contradicted by Saporta, 35-39 by Lapparent, 44 by Dollo, 52 equivalent to Trans

dynamics), 90, 98, 119, 189, 200

Energy, Laws
19, 20,

of,

1-4, 18,
79, 93,

24, 26,

161, 170, 200, 201

formation,

87,

122,

phases
storage

of, 15, 16,

of,

90

174
consistent

124

with Degra

unity

of,

90, 173

dation, 195-197

(See Conservation,
gradation,
Vital, Chemical,

De

Dissipation,

regressive, 66 of man from lemur,

61, 94,

56.,

Mon

170

ism).

of the eye, 106,

149,150

Entelechy, 93

applied to history, 180,

of, 5,

Entropy,

Law

17,

188, 195-197

25, 120, 166, 176,

192

Eye,

evolution

of,

106,

Eocene period, 36, 148 Evolution, Darwin s law

of,

149, 150

21, 22,

23,

24, 29,

39,

157
Flechsig, Paul, 104

Faye, Herve* Auguste Etienne Albans, astrono

"

Form,

92, 138,

143

mer,

Sur

Monde,"

Origine du 16-18, 152

1

Free-will, 107, 159, 160

Flammarion, Camille, 11 Astronomie Populaire,"

73-76, 77, 84,

152
Galileo, 85, 122, 139, 159

Pale*ontologie Philosophique,"

Gaudry, Albert,

"Essaide

48, 148,

150

14

210
Gaudry, Albert, on the eye, 150
Geology, of Lyell, 22
of Lapparent,

INDEX
Glacial
period,
of, 66,

return

expected 69-78
life

degradation of 151, 152

in,

41-50, 147, 148

of

Dana, 151, 152

Gray,

Gravitation, 5, 143, 175 Professor Andrew,

"Lord

Gibbs, Willard, 86, 168 Glacial period, 48

Kelvin,"

18,

19,

178

date

of,

69

Gulliver, 144

II

Haeckel, Ernst, 23, 28, 54

Hegel,

Georg

Wilhelm

Hartmann,
f
l

Eduard von,
158

Friedrich, 14

20, 21, 97,

Helmholz, Ferdinand von,

2, 4,

Philosophic des Unbewussten," 91, 108

waste
of,
6,

158
in

History

relation

to

Heat,

7,

10,

Science, 12, 14, 18, 23,

15, 26, 79, 131, 135,

147

113, 127, 185, 186, 189

development
a
falling
10,

of,

162

Hopf

Ludwig,

Human
Henry,

substance,

Species,"

59-64, 168

176

Huxley, Thomas

Heer, Oswald,

u Flora

fos-

66

silis Arctica," 35,

46

Inertia, 31, 32
Instinct, 32,

Intuition, 92, 110, 187

62, 89, 90,

108-110, 155, 187

Joly, Prof. J.
tivity

"

Kadioac-

and

Geology,"

171

INDEX

211

K
Kant, Immanuel, 81
Kelvin, Lord (Sir William

Kelvin, Lord,
Klaatsch,

life of,

18
of

Professor,

Thomson),
37, 65,

2,

10,

11,

Heidelberg, 59
"Gesetz Krainski, N., der Erhaltung der Energie,"

139, 152, 158,

169, 170, 174, 186, 199, 201

98

his

law of thermody
3, 4, 14, 16,

namics,
21, 24,

175

L
"

Lalande,
tion,"

A.,

Dissolu-

Lex Poppaea, 82
Loeb, Jacques, 98, 101 London, 180

107
95, 179
"

Lamprecht, Karl G., 191

Language,
Lapparent, A. de, de Geologic,"
47, 48,
88,
Traite*

Common
Lyell,
"

Council

of,

82
his

Sir

Charles,

41-44,

Principles,"

35

49, 50, 77, 85,

his law of uniformity,

22,

152
193, 194
of

33 44

Le Bon, Gustave,
Lemur, ancestor
56, 57, 94,

abandoned by Lapparent, 43,

man,

170

M
13,

Macaulay, 180
Malthus, T.

Lord,

80,

Man, a form

of

vital en-

ergy, 88, 94

R,

199

Man

(See Anthropology),
of waste,

Marx, Karl, 14, 199 Miocene period, began

degradation, 38, 47

an agent
134, 135,

131-

155, 156

Monism,

90, 173,
of,

175

his

appearance on earth, 48, 172

as economist, 129,

advantages

174

N
Nature, full of rival energies, 143

Nature

130, 135

212
Nature,
equilibrium 186
Isaac,
3,

INDEX
of,

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wil-

46, 148,

Newton, Sir

5,

helm, 97 Nippur, 69

37, 157, 186,

206

O
Order in the universe, 198, 199
Ostwald, Wilhelm, 98, 100, 166
4,

25,

Panmixia, 165
Pessimism, 199, 200
Phases, 15, 16, 86, 90, 168
Pheidias, 180

Pindar, 180
Poincare, H., 173

Poincare, Lucien,

5,

171

Physical forces since 1830,

161, 182 (See Energy).

Psychology, 98-106, 163166

R
Kadium, 130, 153, 171 Reason (see Thought),
89, 95, 153,

Eeinke,
62,

Dr.

"

J.,

Em-

leitung,"

108, 171, 172,

155,

157,

200, 201

162, 167, 204, 205 an arrested Act, 107, 111, 155, 176, 177

Remopleurides, 150 Rosa s law of progressive

reduction, 52, 65

a result of tropism, 99,

Rostand, Edmond, 180

Rousseau, Jean 107, 168
Jacques,

100 an instrument of Will, 116, 155

S
Saporta,

Comte
des

"

de,

Le

Monde

Plantes,"

Schopenhauer, Die Welt

"

Arthur,
als
Wille,"

35, 36, 37, 47,

148

91, 92, 97, 199,

200

INDEX
Scorpion, 145, 146 Socialist theories of
tory, 67,

213

Spencer, Herbert, 191

his

Stationary epoch, 186

Stewart, Balfour, 158 Sun, contraction of, 38, 4143, 49

185
inexhausti

Solar energy,
ble, 5,

6-11
of,

dissipation

13,

15,

49, 68-70, 148 Southey, Kobert, 80

storage-power of, 130 waste of, 7, 8, 134,135 Swift, Dean, 156, 181

Tait, Peter Guthrie, 5, 8

Thought,

the

ultimate

Thermodynamics,
21, 24,

Law

of,

3-4, 10, 14, 16, 19, 20, 145, 148, 155,

energy, 113, 137, 138 an arrested act, 107,

111, 177

159
applies to vital energy,

25-27, 67, 68, 88, 93,

95, 188,
to

an organic growth, 104 106 Times, the London, 83

Topinard, 65-68
Paul,
62,

200

63,

Thought and Will,

116, 117

Thomson, Dr. Hanna, 102,

Transformation, equiva lent to Evolution and

Thomson,

103, 105 Sir

William

Degradation, 174, 196

87,

122,

(See Kelvin).

Tropism, 99, 101, 163

Thought, a mode of tion, 102, 137, 163

a diffused energy,
113, 139, 153,

mo
140

"

John, Tyndall, considered as a

of
Motion,"

Heat

Mode

6-11, 13,

an intense energy, 112,

154,

15

162

U
Uniformity,
of, 22,

Lyell

Law

Unity, the Ultimate, (See

43, 44

Monism)

214

INDEX
Evolution,
159, 164, 167, 168, 179, 182, 183

Universities, of Europe, their attitude towards

Vital Energy,

7, 8, 165, 167, 188, 205 falls under the law of

Vital Energy, intensity

of,

106, 145/146, 147, 148,

154
the subject of History, 23 the Will its potential,

thermodynamics,

3,

15, 17, 18-21, 25, 26,

27, 78, 93, 140, 142,

91
Vitalism,
tory

148, 165, 166, 200

Driesch

His-

man

a form

of,

88

of, 13,

190

an independent energy,
12, 13, 16, 24, 141

Voltaire, 156

W
Wagner, Kichard, 183
Will, the potential of vital

Will, absorbed by mechananical energy, 163

intensity of, 145

Energy, 187
"

90-96,

155,

Wundt, Wilhelm,
attraction,

"Sys-

mechanical
101, 102

tern der Philosophic,"

97

supernatural, 103, 105,

106, 113

Zittel,

Karl Alfred von,

190

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FURET CO.
BALTO.

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16
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A letter to American teachers of history